the funny thing is, it all started with a comic in the first place.
picture it, 1983, mardi gras. we're on this long drive from boulder to new orleans, and to pass the time cindy made these doodles in her notebook, of a bear.
in those days, spam came in the mail. we used the bears name, gt bear, for the spam to keep it separate.
a bear with a hammer actually. and the other character was stick-cindy
so later that year, when i found a teddy bear in the trash, it took on the personality of the cartoon bear, only more so.
so naturally when i got online in 1990, i used gtbear for my email and chat handle. the aardvark thing came later.