Using Hobbit icons inside your status messages

Is there some "officially condoned" method to get Hobbit icons into your
status messages?
 
Back when using Big Brother, I would just add something like: 
<IMG SRC=/gifs/green.gif ALT=green HEIGHT=16 WIDTH=16 BORDER=0>
to the status message.  I'm sure something similar would work for Hobbit
too.
I was just wondering if there was some built-in auto substitution in
Hobbit that would be cleaner.  Maybe like putting " __GREEN__" inside
the status message.