Here's the avatar you will never have on Xbox Live: a cigar chomping guy with an enormous head and a machine gun for an arm who's flipping you the bird and stealing lunch money from other avatars. He spits and makes wanking gestures and chops the heads off other avatars. He has a catch phrase. He gets rich robbing banks.

Each of those things violates one of the explicit rules posted on the XNA site for developers creating games for Xbox Live. I suppose I can understand most of them. Here's the most revealing one:

A player's avatar does not have an autonomous personality or instinct. The avatar is under the control of the owning player. It can have idle animations and can respond appropriately to game events but it should not interact with the user as if it is separate from the player, try to get the player's attention in an annoying manner.

Microsoft really expects us to make avatars who not only look like us, but into whom we project our identities while we're playing games. We are supposed to be our avatars. Our avatars are supposed to be us. I guess that's why they're called avatars, since that's what that word means.

However, I shall continue to refuse by making my avatar (pictured) as weird, creepy, and inappropriate as I can. Within the parameters of the rules, of course.