Koalas

My love for koalas started pretty benign. I was bored at work and they are easy to doodle.

I started drawing them in race cars and playing tennis and giving them to all my coworkers. One year, I made everyone Koala Valentines.

My punk rock fanzine needed a new name. For a while, my zine was called Hobo Koala.

photo credit: Twelve12pm

That inspired the name of my production company, The Hobo Koala Media Empire. The cute little hobo koala was my profile picture for the Empire's Google+ page until I put my beautiful face up instead.

Koalas were the mascot of my tattoo fanzine, Tattoos I have Met and Loved. This is from the inside front cover above the credits.

I formed a Twitter for the tattoo fanzine, tweeting for a while under the @Tattoo_Koala. But when I stopped the zine, I stopped the Twitter. 

I really started getting into Twitter with my account from my show, @mattmanic. There is a Twitter joke format called the Spirit Animal (or Petronus for the more Harry Potter-inclined). My entry was, "My Spirit Animal is the koala, because I sleep 19 hours a day and girls want to cuddle me."

That was not my only koala reference in my tweets. I would frequently use them to emphasize my huggability or when begging my Australian followers to mail me one.  

I love koalas. And I flipped out yesterday when this followed me: