Corel Gallery Clipart

What can I tell you, it’s a hunk of salami on a cutting board. Except it’s not salami. It’s venison, although if we’re lucky sometimes I’ll track down a boar, and I make sausage from that, curing the salted meat for a month or so in the shed behind the cabin. My grandson, he’s never had authentic salami, only this stuff. He’s never had pepperoni pizzas. Never had a beef burger. No French fries, onion rings, no single slice American cheese. No America for that matter. Once he asked me what I missed most from before, and I said, Tater Tots.

SALAMI.BMF

This triangular pennant is the international maritime signal flag for 'second substitution'—a repeater flag that duplicates the meaning of the second flag in the hoist. Except. The pennant should be azure, not red as pictured here. Corel fucked up. We didn't realize this until much too late. In the Bay of Biscay, under orders of radio silence, Rod signalled frantically, his meaning glitched. Below deck we held our breath.

2ND_SUB.BMF

An American football, aka a pigskin. The sportswriters compare football to war, but Father John believes they’re wrong. Football is like faith. A game of make-believe played on a field of arbitrary white lines, contingency and chaos all around. Coaches call their plays and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. Just like prayer. The refs enforce the rules, imperfectly. That’s the church. Only the crowd in the stadium is the same whether it’s football or religion. Each side believing they’re the only side who deserves to win. Ah, hell, Father John thinks crudely, making the Sign of the Cross. Who am I kidding, football is football and nothing more. He eats his wings and watches the game.

FOOTBALT.BMF

An extremely magnified view of a flea. Christine can’t stand fleas, I mean, who can? But Christine takes her repulsion to another level. When her indoor/outdoor cat had fleas—even with its flea collar on—she kicked it outside, permanently. No pestilence was going to enter her home. She brooked no invaders, insect and human alike.

FLEAT.BMF

A color portrait of American businessman Michael Miles, who oversaw the dramatic turnaround of the Kentucky Fried Chicken brand in the late 1970s. Miles later became the CEO of Kraft, where he engineered the $13 billion merger of Philip Morris and Kraft in 1988. Yes, for a time, one of the largest food companies in the U.S.A. was the same as one of the largest tobacco companies in the U.S.A. Because what’s more American than Grey Poupon, Kool-Aid, Kraft Singles, and the Marlboro Man.

MILES_M1.BMF

Needle-nosed pliers. Everyone has a pair. Rod crimps an electrical connection after a minor engine repair. Samantha plucks out the bridge pins on her Martin. Lou’s pliers sit unused on his dusty workbench. Cindy resorts to pliers scavenged from the maintenance crew after her staple remover disappeared. Dr. Slife extracts loose teeth with his pliers. Red extracts other things with his.

WIREBEND.BMF

A black and white maze-like structure. They told Phil, something Aztec. Give us something Aztec. And poor Phil, what does he know? It’s 1994, his AOL username is bskymine and his 28.8 modem screeches every time he logs on. Phil doesn’t even have Encarta yet. Phil makes up a random pattern, vaguely Mesoamerican, but for all he knows it could be Celtic. Totem Graphics pays Phil to make cheap clipart, not study history.

AZTEC_UR.BMF

The should rank insignia of a Vice Admiral in the United States Navy. It shows three stars arranged in a triangle pattern, topped by an anchor. Upon Groat’s promotion from Vice Admiral to Admiral he celebrated by shredding a box of documents labeled “Grimbard.”

VICEADM1.BMF

A top view and side view of a human molar. And not just any molar. Dr. Slife extracted the tooth from a dumpy old widower who had been in incredible pain. X-rays showed the tooth was fine, and Slife secretly believed the agony to be psychosomatic. The guy’s wife had just died after all. But the widower insisted that Slife remove the tooth. And who was Slife to argue? At the end of the day Slife took the tooth home and added it to the cigar box in his nightstand. Like all the teeth in the box, Slife could identify the molar by touch. One week later Slife woke in a panic and fumbled for the nightstand, yanking open the drawer and shoving his hand into the cigar box. Loose teeth clicked and clacked in the darkness. It only took a moment to feel that the molar was gone. Slife looked up from the nightstand and saw in the corner of his bedroom a lithe figure streaked by a sliver of moonlight. The figure held up his hand, and there, pinched between his slender thumb and forefinger was the missing tooth. The figure winked and disappeared in a flash of ozone and fresh cut grass.

MOLAR.BMF

The red maple leaf flag of Canada, fluttering in the wind. I’m not sure what was more shocking: seeing a nearly intact flag still flying from a government building, or realizing it was the Canadian flag hoisted high above the statehouse here in Lansing. My grandson didn’t understand my confusion, so I had to explain the Canadian incursions that unfolded after the Obsidian Eclipse. He still didn’t understand, but I cracked a joke anyway. Figures that I finally get a chance to live in Canada, and it’s the end of the world.

FLAG040.BMF

The USS Virginia, a nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser in the fleet of the United States Navy for almost twenty years. The Virginia was decommissioned in 1994 after deployments in the North Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and Persian Gulf. She was sold for scrap the following year to a gentleman known only as Grimbard. The sale was initially meet with fierce resistance from the Department of Defense. As one Joint Chef put it, “I would no sooner sell a nuclear-powered warship to this Grimbard character than I would to Sting.” Objections to the Grimbard sale faded as the Navy sold off a series of nuclear submarines and battleships to the Big Four one-name pop stars of the era: Sting, Prince, Madonna, and Bono. The sale to Grimbard closed in 1996, after which neither Grimbard nor the Virginia were seen for many years to come.

VIRGINIA.BMF

A color portrait of Katherine Gamble, heir to the vast Gamblier fortune, though obviously Katherine has changed her surname to distance herself from her unsavory ancestor, Gilles Gamblier, who was sentenced to death under King Louis XIII for various acts of lycanthropy, including devouring thirteen children in the subprefecture of Dole. Gilles Gamblier was burned alive at the stake and his ashes were spread to the four winds.

GAMBLEK1.BMF

A black and white line drawing of a trailing vine, an elegant star-shaped flower on top. The design strikes Rose as vaguely medieval. She imagines the flower tucked away in a corner on the Book of Hours, the parchment worn smooth by the loving touch of aged hands, the knuckles red and swollen with arthritis.

FLORAL13.BMF

POV: you see a series of black and white concentric circles stretching into infinity, intersected in the four cardinal directions by four kites with inverse black and white patterns. The shapes drift and spiral and it occurs to you that perhaps you’ve been drugged. The circles are trippy and you must be tripping.

ICON024.BMF

The reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States, featuring a pyramid with an eye at the apex, the so-called Eye of Providence. Two Latin phrases adorn the seal. At the top, ANNUIT CŒPTIS, which means “He favors our undertakings.” At the bottom, NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM, which means “New Order of the Ages.” Conspiracy theories abound about the Great Seal and its mystical imagery. Every last one of the conspiracy theories, including those that contradict each other, are true.

ANNUIT.BMF

A medical illustration of a human pancreas. It’s unlabelled, but that doesn’t bother Red. He knows the names of the parts. The head, the body, the tail, as if the pancreas were a separate creature living inside us. Well, once living inside us. Hey little guy, he says to the pancreas in his hand. How are you doing?

PANCR.BMF

The 1976 flag of the Commonwealth Secretariat, the intergovernmental agency of the Commonwealth of Nations, those 56 countries that were once part of the British Empire and which still share a common language and cultural ties. The flag features a gold globe surrounded by 64 rays of light. @dogebromomo isn’t aware of any of this. He sees the image and the “Commonwealth Secretariat” caption and thinks it refers to famous racehorses somehow, and more importantly, would make a great logo for the new cryptocurrency he’s launching (pending investors), called, rather confusingly, goldcoin.

COMNWLTH.BMF

Mattie isn’t sure what this sign means. There’s the Man and Woman icons, like what you’d see on restroom doors at a fast food joint. Over the man is a directional arrow point up; over the woman is a directional arrow pointing down. What’s the purpose of the sign? Men must move in one direction and women in the opposite? Where would you find such a sign? Posted in the lobby on elevator doors? Men can only take the elevator up and women down? It makes no sense to Mattie. Take away the arrows and even then the sign would make no sense to Mattie.

SYMB260.BMF

A woman from behind, her face in profile and her dark hair falling past her shoulders. The figure haunts Evelyn’s dreams. The figure haunts Evelyn in her waking hours too. In odd moments—browsing at Waldenbooks, in line at her S&L—she catches glimpse of the figure on her periphery. Evelyn turns to look at the woman, and she is gone. Evelyn searches for an explanation. Is the woman a product of her imagination on overdrive? Is she an apparition? Evelyn knows Myers’ work on psychorrhagic diathesis, of course, but she always dismissed his theories. Now, as she recognizes the woman’s reflection in the mirrored booth at Denny’s, only to find her gone when Evelyn turns around, she reconsiders.

FACEBACK.BMF

A color portrait of American financier and billionaire Ronald Perelman. He used to be one of @dogebromomo’s heroes, but then rumors started swirling around that Perelman was all but broke, his wealth nothing but smoke and mirrors and funny accounting. @dogobromomo knows he’ll never make that mistake. He moves some ethereum into his MetaMask wallet to buy a commemorative tweet.

PERELMA1.BMF

The coat of arms of the House Wolseley, an ancient family in the hundred of Pirehill in Staffordshire, England. The red shield features a white dog with a curled tail and a long orange tongue extending from its snout, symbolizing fire. The Wolesley family appeared in the 11th century Domesday Book under the name Ulselei. Ten centuries later the name had transformed to Wozzly. The family was no longer a revered landowner in England, but a pair of acrobatic brothers from Iowa in a traveling show called the Wozzly Bozzly Flying Doo-Dah Dawgs. Samantha caught the Doo-Dah Dawgs at the Philly Fringe Festival, where the show—which featured bowling balls, a blowtorch, and a small trampoline—was cut short when one of the Wozzly brothers inadvertently caught the other on fire.

H3.BMF

A silhouette of the USS Pegasus, a hydrofoil designed for speed and mobility. Official records indicate that this U.S. Navy vessel was decommissioned in 1993. Evelyn is aware, however, of chatter on certain BBS forums and hacker IRC channels that offer up highly detailed refutations of the ship’s final years. The Pegasus was not decommissioned and conveniently sold for scrap, as the official story goes. Rather, the ship disappeared, without a trace, one March night in 1991 in the waters off Key West. According to this theory, which Evelyn finds compelling despite herself, no bodies were ever recovered and no debris was ever found. The Pegasus was simply gone.

PEGSSREV.BMF

A young woman at rest, languidly draped over a soft bed and plump pillow. She’s exhausted because she’s posed for hours for Johannes. Sitting still, her head tilted just so, an earring dangling to her shoulder. There will be much written about the young woman in the centuries to come, almost all of it speculation, almost all of it wrong. One thing they will never write about one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years from now is how draining it is to be painted, how deadening it is to be art.

ARTNOUVR.BMF

An unlabeled 3.5-inch floppy disk. It arrived at the station in a plain brown envelope addressed to Detective Brawley with no return address. Brawley had the envelope and disk dusted for prints, but nothing showed up. Now he’s with the tech guys, watching them carefully insert the disk into a PC. There are a few files on it: readme.txt and a series of jpegs. They open the readme and find a single line of text, in all caps: CHANGELINGS STAIN THE WORLD AND IN CRIMSON I SHALL STAIN THE CHANGELINGS

DISK3A.BMF

A male body builder in a pose reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker. The body builder would go on to have a short-lived career making low budget straight-to-video knockoffs of Arnold Schwarzenegger films—short-lived because at the time, everyone and everything was short-lived. Grimbard made sure of it.

BODYBLD2.BMF

A man sitting on a pile of cash, smiling demonically. This private equity shit has gone too far.

CASH315.BMF

A cartoon with customs agents strip-searching a white businessman, while foreign terrorists with guns and bombs pass through unimpeded. Is this cartoon: (A) Racist; (B) Satirical; (C) Not Funny; (D) Weirdly anticipatory of the TSA, which did not exist at the time of the cartoon’s making; (E) All of the above?

CUSTOMS.BMF

The triangle symbol for “amplifier” on a circuit diagram. The triangle is labeled “IVR,” which stands for Input Voltage Range. Rod’s not great at making electronics. The work requires a certain finesse, whereas he prefers grand, sweeping gestures. Still, if he can wire this right, things in Medellín are going to go just fine.

SEMI03.BMF

An abstract representation of a genderless figure undergoing a chest X-ray. The bones of the ribcage appear on the X-ray, looking like a giant scorpion inside the figure. Just a few broken ribs, the P.A. tells Matt, you’re lucky. The other driver, who flew through a stop sign and t-boned Matt, was not so lucky. She died on impact, the paramedics told Matt before they took him to the hospital. It’s an echo, Matt knows. Every car crash is an echo of the one that came before.

SYMB304.BMF

A tattoo in the shape of a pair of crossed anchors. Rod, defying all stereotypes of men of the sea, does not have an anchor tattoo. No, his tattoo is an original. And no one who sees it lives to tell the tale.

ANCHOR6.BMF