Way way way back in time, I got an Amiga 600 for Xmas.Loading up DPaint for the first time, I wanted to test how much I could do with it's animation feature.
DPaint IV had two animation modes. Full Frame or Compressed.  With compressed, as long as you stuck to minor changes, you could get a decent number of frames out of it.  In Full Frame mode, I could typically get 4 frames of animation!!  With the newfangled Mouse control, I scribbled a silly little 4 page cartoon.

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A strange little squiggly character was drawn.
Since I was scrawling everything with this new magical "Mouse", (rather than my previous Amstrad experience of Joystick-based art!!) it was a bit of a learning curve. The squiggly character had to have a name, and I had to be able to scribble the name easily with the mouse, so AL seemed easy enough to do.
In the 4 page comic adventure*, AL went to the shop, bought a fish, then came home and cooked it.

"AL LIKES FISH" was scribbled in the corner. (This lives on, to this day, in AL's Twitter Avatar)

(The second I find this file, I'll post it! I'm fairly sure I still have it, somewhere..)
And so the "anim" remained. I drew a few more silly "strips" with this character, and he amused me. Even as my mouse-skills improved, I occasionally went back and drew silly squiggly AL pictures.
AL's name remained a two character name. Because I was doodling the letters onscreen with a mouse, I left it in capitals. All the other text in the animations were similarly capitals.

AL was eventually given the second name "O'DARE", because I felt it amusing to have him be called "AL O'DARE" ('Ello there!) with his longer ALBERT O'DARE being used on occasion, so the jokey name isn't as obvious.
As the Internet age appeared, I found myself using my PC to create bits of silly music. I attempted various random bits and pieces, and found myself noticing similarities between my early art attempts and those I was doing with the music.

As such, it seemed only logical to brand them under AL's name.
AL created a bunch of silly music, posted it to various places, and started to build up his own little existence online.

In keeping with his scrawled text beginnings, I felt it only natural to have him type in only capital letters. AL's since developed his own SPESHUL way of spelling, much to the annoyance of his followers.

Over the years, as my musical skills have developed, AL has grown from a silly nonsensical character, into a somewhat respected musician. Nowadays it's not uncommon to see his Choons be more popular than my own AGameAWeek games.

It's curious to be jealous of yourself. But this is just the way that it is.

And so, AL continues to create, and people continue to enjoy his creations.

Long may he CHOON.
(* calling it a "4 page comic adventure" makes it sound much more impressive than it actually is!!)