Captain of industry. Elder statesman of Internet comedy. Pseudo-journalist. Master of the aural realm. Advice columnist. Kind-hearted curmudgeon. World traveler. Film pioneer. Best-selling author. Envelope-pushing sequential artist. These are but a few of the labels commonly affixed to the man who calls himself "AAlgar"— but only by AAlgar himself.
Born Ronald Ross Watt III, he enjoyed a few promising formative years in civilization (Arlington, VA, just outside the nation’s capital) before having his hopes and dreams shattered by a mother who preferred the quiet of country living to luxuries like public transportation and indoor plumbing. At age four, he was dragged kicking and screaming to the rural nightmare known as southern Maryland — home of grown men who were unashamed to call themselves "Dickie" and an inexplicable concoction known as "stuffed ham." It was here, in southern Maryland, that Watt would live well into adulthood, a brief and misguided interlude in Philadelphia notwithstanding.
An early, adorable picture of AAl and a kitty.

It has been said that most, if not all, of the world’s greatest comedians were forged through environmental conflict, transforming the hardships of their surroundings into expressions that not only help catapult them out of said hardships but also entertain people in the process. And indeed, if Ron Watt is to be taken at his word, similar circumstances led to his interest in (and eventual obsession with) humor. However, the only characteristic that this young man appears to share with those great comics of the past is a tendency to overexaggerate.

In 1991, impossibly seeking simultaneously to conform and establish his own identity, he assumed the nickname "AAlgar" and began attempting to express himself within the narrow confines of his high school’s extracurricular offerings. While he claims that he doesn’t recall the original meaning of the name, the simple truth is that the real explanation is far too anticlimactic and uninteresting to bother sharing. "It sounds cool and it fits," he says, "and that’s all that really matters."

As his academic career drew to a close, he gathered a few friends and took up the challenge of producing a short film. This film — the dismally unwatchable (and enigmatically titled) PressTime — would obsess AAlgar for most of what remained of the 1990s, stalling his inevitable deluge of rants, poorly produced audio skits and other attempts at creative expression until the latter half of that decade.
In the mid-90s, all AAl really did was sit around his apartment, staring at skulls. Thank god he started writing.
It was late 1996 — as the bandwagon nature of the Internet truly became visible to AAlgar for the first time — that he would debut the advice/commentary column known as The Gar Side. Originally intended as a very transparent manifesto for ill-informed political and social opinions, The Gar Side eventually evolved into the slightly less cringe inducing Sarcastic Voyage, broadening its focus in the process. As Sarcastic Voyage pressed on, the advice column format was given a back seat to a broad assortment of topics from travel to conspiracies to the all-important issue of anal leakage.

But the column was as unstable as its creator, and proved quite unreliable in terms of consistency. Polished, almost professional work would be followed only a day later with a piece that appeared to be written by one of those infinite monkeys at the infinite typewriters. On at least half a dozen occasions, AAlgar announced the end of the Voyage, only to sheepishly return within a matter of weeks (or sometimes only days). It is for these reasons that many believe that success continued to elude AAlgar, thereby fueling his instability and creating a terribly circular pattern with no hope of being broken.

Many experts point to the myriad contradictions in his personal life as causes for his constant mental turmoil. A sworn pacifist, he nonetheless earned his fairly comfortable living on the nearby Patuxent River Naval Air Warfare Center. (In fact, he even managed to achieve a supervisory position for a time, forever negating his claim that he was "just a worker bee" and had no real authority within the military-industrial complex.) He railed regularly against popular culture and the "dumbing down" of America, yet his prose clearly reflected an unhealthy saturation of TV and comic books. And — perhaps most perplexing of all — he relentlessly badmouthed his small-town surroundings, yet apparently never entertained the notion that he might be happier if he moved away.

Despite these shortcomings, AAlgar nevertheless began to turn his self-perceived success with Sarcastic Voyage into a snowballing "career" of creative experimentation. In 1998, with the help of original collaborator Mark "Bob" Boszko, a satisfactory edit of PressTime was finally thrown together, burying once and for all the terrible demon that had haunted him. Also that year (and into 1999), several collections of audio humor — skits, nervous semi-prank phone calls and just plain goofiness — were assembled under the title Audio Sarcastic Voyage.
AAl's constant travel crises made for some fine installments of Sarcastic Voyage, despite their effect on his sanity.

By the summer of 1999, AAl had found a moderate amount of stability in a new live-in romantic partner. Though she was blamed by less informed readers for dulling the edge of Sarcastic Voyage, the actual effect was quite the opposite of the typical Yoko Gambit, as the avalanche of new material that followed their engagement in November of 1999 illustrates. Within the first six months of 2000, AAlgar had not only completed three novellas (the so-called "Fish Stories" trilogy), but also (again with Mark Boszko) a documentary detailing his failed film entitled A Big Blue Pain in the Ass: The Story Behind PressTime, a new online comedy venture called "The AAlgar Corporation" and a number of new contributions to Sarcastic Voyage (despite the once again apocryphal announcement of that feature’s demise).

By mid-year, he had also begun contributing to — and eventually editing for — the then-up-and-coming online magazine hackedtobits. He added yet another feature to his webpage — a "General Humor" catchall for pieces that didn’t fit anywhere else. And his futile run for the Presidency had actually produced a short commercial — more than the Libertarians or Socialists managed to do. So the theory that cohabitation had crushed his creative spirit was clearly a misguided one.
In the early-to-mid 2000s, AAl grew his hair. Also, several chins. The simple fact that he hasn't thrown himself off a cliff leads one to conclude that he doesn't look like this anymore.
2001 saw a few exciting events occur in the life of AAlgar — his first two books (Fish Stories and The Sarcastic Verses, a compilation of the first five years of Sarcastic Voyage) were published, he got married and Sarcastic Voyage made yet another "comeback," only to trail off into awkward silence as the horrors of September 11 rendered humor seemingly obsolete. That year was both his most productive (in terms of actual tangible content, i.e. the two books) and his least (in terms of actually creating anything new), proving yet again that no measure of maturity and stability could ever reign in this man's trademark inconsistency.
In early 2002, the self-proclaimed social commentator stumbled upon a way of dealing with the somber world situation — he ignored it completely and instead began toying with expensive 3-D modeling software. The result was Tales of the Odd, a semi-regular comic book that sought to preserve the spirit of hundreds of nonsensical doodles AAl had made in the margins of various notebooks over the years. Some feel that the comic was the final piece of evidence needed to prove AAlgar's insanity; others believe that it was actually kind of funny at times. Through 2005 and 2006, AAl published the first six issues of Tales of the Odd in comic book form. While not his best work to date, he finished a comic book, which is probably more than you've done.
Also in 2004, AAl wrote, directed and animated (with the help of the very talented Mark Darin) a Flash-based adventure game called Brain Hotel. Brain Hotel was based on Tales of the Odd, and earned the duo massive internet attention and critical acclaim both electronically and in print. It was the boost that AAl needed to continue on with his silly pursuits rather than just growing up as he had been contemplating.
AAl and Mark Darin, some Halloween, as the Marx brothers.
In 2005, AAlgar and his wife were separated, and in 2006, after much agonizing with lawyers and judges, they were divorced. They remain on good terms, though they're both quite enjoying making their mutual friends as uncomfortable as possible about their situation. Amazingly, AAl used this situation as an excuse to achieve escape velocity and actually left southern Maryland in March of 2006. He is currently residing in Seattle, where he plans to write protest music and cut down on his bathing by 75%. For the earth.
See? This was 2007. One chin. Short hair. Never again. Promise.
Since relocating to Seattle, despite (or perhaps because of) difficulty in securing permanent emplyment, AAl has resumed producing material at a somewhat reliable rate. He collaborated with Matt Rowbotham on the webcomic, Menace of the Intermen in 2007, and that evolved into 2008's God Damn It, Matt! (with Rowbotham and Kevin "Flonk" Lynch). As of this writing, Tales of the Odd is due to wrap up with an original graphic novel sometime in 2008. And other assorted things continue to go on the website on a roughly weekly basis. The future's looking even more promising, though since AAl refuses to announce projects until he's certain they'll be completed, you're just going to have to trust that one.