What does your avatar mean and why did you choose it?

[Ted the Penguin]

ok so I have seen enough of the what does "GB" stand for questions... but it got me to thinking, there are a bunch of random and weird avatars on this (and every other) forum, mine included. I am wondering what they mean or more importantly WHY you chose it. (by avatar I mean your handle, or whatever you refer to the name you go by on the forum as)

I will start,

Ted the Penguin

Ted is a character in Ctrl+Alt+Del, a webcomic that I have read for a long time. I started reading it about the time I started getting into online gaming, or more specifically CS/DoD. you know, games where you need an avatar so people know who killed them. anyways, I forget some of the thought process I went through to decide on Ted the Penguin, it involved ted being a somewhat random and humorous character in the comic, that he was generally hated by one of the main characters, and supposedly wanted to kill him... oh and there is a strip where he is the penguin from fight club

I started using it for that and decided I liked it, so it became my standard avatar for most everything online, do if you are somewhere and see someone posting with the avatar "Ted the Penguin" << perferred, or if their software sucks and doesnt allow that "TedThePenguin" or some such permutation, my xbox Live gamertag is "Ted teh Penguin" someone had already taken "the" although it could have been me in a past forgotten registration. and in some online games I might appear as "-=CAD=- Ted the Penguin" or some permutation thereof: because I feel cooler when it looks like I am in a clan (or whatever) :p

I egarly await responses

[fuzzweed]

mine`s the fractal plant that grows on an infinately high mountain in the book "white light" by rudy rucker http://www.amazon.com/White-Light-Third-...156858198X
*ucked up book, but the stuff just caught my imagination, and i guess i read it just about the same time as i started needing an internet name. it can be a bit embarassing as i`ve got older (espescially my email address) cos people seem to think its something to do with drugs (not that it couldnt be )

[McBainUK]

My story is similar to Ted the Penguin's. Was forced to think of an online name when started to play online PC games like CS:Source and BF2 a couple years ago. I love The Simpsons so choose McBain, the parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger as he was the only one who looks like he could shoot

I wont explain the 'UK' bit... :p

[gEd]

gEd - lead character from Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy. I adopted this handle about 20 years ago when I very occasionally got to add my high score to an arcade game such as defender. The letters are very close together so it's easy to add using a joystick!

I used an upper case character in the middle to indicate just how l33t I am (or something). It's post ironic. :-)

[groover km]

Mine just shows my roots, even though I live in the US I'm a brit (you can take the boy out of Birmingham, but you can't take Birmingham out the boy...)

Like everyone else, was looking for an online ID years ago and settled 'Groover' from the old T-Rex song of the same name; just like the sound of it. the km suffix is/was my wife's initials pre-marriage. IIRC, I added them for Instant Messenger as Groover was taken, and I've just stuck with it. It's also my xbox live gamertag.

The avatar is simply the old Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen cover. England's dreaming, as they say.

[DeepBlueC]

I used to do software design for a marine electronics co..

[BoomerBrian]

Needed an online name for all of the forums. My name is Brian and I am a big Oklahoma Sooners football fan so Boomer from Boomer Sooner went well with Brian.

[m.clizzle]

needed a name but all variations of my real name were taken. so i used the initial M. and first two letters of my last name CL and added the snoop dogg flava of izzle to the end. however on some forums they do not allow for "_" or "." so it ended up mclizzle, to which i was often referred to as mc lizzle. which got a tad annoying. proper annunciation is em clizzle.

the eagles logo is due to the undying devotion to the birds. been an eagles fan since my first pro football game back in 87. coming up on two decades.

[nitrogen_widget]

I love Guiness.
but hated it out of the Bottle / Can.
Then they came up with a way to have the cascade at home.
The way via a little device that released nitrogen into the beer when you opened the can / bottle.
The device was called...

A nitrogen_widget.

And henceforth I used that as my handle in most of anything involved with being online be it gaming or forums.

I have no avatar because i'm too lazy to set it up.

[Torque]

It's a measurement of force.... I needed a screen name for games and such back around '91. Since a lot of my hobbies revolve around auto mechanics, I choose Torque and have had it ever since. It's easy to say and allows room on the scoreboard at the end of the game for my ultra high score. LOL j/k. If Torque is taken, I use Hemi345