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Corel Gallery Clipart

@clipart.bsky.social

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In 1994 I bought a Corel Gallery CD-ROM with 10,000 clipart images. Thirty years later those images haunt this ghost story bot. Posts autodelete. Credits: clipart from Corel; conversion, curation, code, and alt text by @samplereality.bsky.social

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Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 1h

CLOWNFIC.BMF

Heard joke once: Fish goes to vet. Says it’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says it feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Vet says, “Treatment is simple. Great clown fish Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.” Fish bursts into tears. Says, “But doctor…I am Pagliacci.”

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 4h

WHALES.BMF

The cover of issue 1 of Cetology Today, colored ocean-green and showing a pod of orcas in the upper left corner. Cetology Today is a scientific journal devoted to the study of whales, dolphins, and porpoises. In this debut issue, dated Spring 2034, there are articles on: AI-powered transcription and translation of whale songs; the paranormal phenomenon of ghost whales in the North Atlantic; and an In Memoriam for a famed marine biologist who disappeared at sea while tracking a leviathan of unknown origins.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 7h

SYMB320.BMF

A black and white icon of a human figure swinging a racquet. The figure is oddly bisected with a solid white line. As if the torso were sliding to the right faster than the legs could manage. We've all felt that way, thinks Ann.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 10h

AHART.BMF

A medical illustration of a human heart. Red thinks it’s funny how different it is from the soft rounded red Valentines heart. There’s nothing warm and fuzzy at all about the anatomical heart. It’s a messy glob of muscles and vessels. When you drain away all the blood, it’s not even red. It’s white, a ghost heart.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 13h

L1011TW.BMF

An illustration of a Lockheed Martin L-1011 commercial airliner, flying under the Trans World Airlines banner. Rod didn’t like flying, but sometimes it was necessary. In ’83 he flew on an L-1011 from New York to Stuttgart, using his Bahamian passport. It said his name was Roger.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 16h

BANNER2.BMF

A simple piece of clipart in the form of the banner, unremarkable but for the inspiration it provided to a junior marketing assistant at Hotwired.com in 1994 to create the first banner web advertisement.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 19h

ATTALI1.BMF

A color portrait of French economist and writer Jacques Attali, who is most famous as President François Mitterrand’s senior counselor during the 1980s. Attali is also credited with plucking Emmanuel Macron from obscurity and guiding him on the path to becoming France’s 25th president in 2017. Lesser known is Attali’s theories of musical composition, detailed in his 1977 book, “Bruits: essai sur l'economie politique de la musique,” or, in English, “Noise: The Political Economy of Music.” It is here that Attali describes what he saw in the 1970s as a new mode of musical composition: sampling and remixing. Just look at the clipart of the bespectacled man in a coat and tie and think, yeah, that dude is a major theorist of remix culture. 🤯️

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 22h

DOBERMAN.BMF

A Doberman pinscher, baring its long sharp teeth. The dog’s low snarl awakens Dr. Slife. The brats had wanted a family dog. Cute, cuddly, and useless. Dr. Slife needed a guard dog. Lean, mean, purposeful. He won out. The sleek beast sits on its haunches, growling at something in the closet. The scent of a newly mown lawn hangs in the air.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 1d

ALDERNEY.BMF

The flag of Alderney Island, the northernmost of the inhabited Channel Islands. The flag shows a red St. George’s Cross against a white background, a lion emblem in the center. Alderney was controlled by Germany in World War II, the only British soil to be occupied by the Axis powers. The Nazis built several concentration camps on Alderney, which they nicknamed “Adolf Island.” Run by the SS, the camps imprisoned Polish POWs, Jews, and, as a strictly-speaking personal obsession of the camp’s commandant, a number of witches deported from Guernsey, as well as pixies, knockers, and Gwyllions the SS had picked up here and there. In 1944 Josef Mengele visited the island, returning to Auschwitz a few days later with a glass jar full of pixies whose wings had been sheared away.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 1d

PFOOT.BMF

The underside of a human foot. The foot belongs to Samantha. It took forever for Samantha to find a psychic in Tulsa who could read feet as well as palms, but now it’s finally happening. The psychic takes Samantha’s left foot in her hands and examines each toe, the arch, the heel, the pad. The psychic suddenly curses and shoves the foot far away. She jumps to her feet and stumbles backward, away from Samantha. You, she says, pointing a long finger at Samantha. You must leave Tulsa now, and never come back. If you ever return here, I will kill you. This is the best news I’ve had in weeks, thinks Samantha.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 1d

SURFN248.BMF

A surfer with shaggy long hair heading to the beach, board in hand. You’re not surprised to learn the surfer’s name is Chad Reeves and he goes by the nickname “Reef.” Anyway. Reef is amped to catch some bitchin’ waves today. He’s having a good time out there, macking on his longboard. Picture perfect day in his secret spot. He’s never told anyone about it. Which is why he’s all alone, riding in on the crest of a big one, when a seagull three times the size seagulls are supposed to be swoops down and with immaculate timing in two rapid-fire jerks of its beak plucks out Reef’s eyeballs and casts them to the water below one after the other. The bird is gone before Reef even realizes what’s happened. He screams blindly as the board takes him shoreward, sea spray filling his empty sockets with a mist that tastes like tears.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 1d

LINC_MEM.BMF

A three-quarter view of the Lincoln Memorial, an enormous neoclassical monument honoring Abraham Lincoln that once stood along the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922, and for one hundred and fifty years there were few buildings in America that evoked such profound feelings of sacredness. Now, of course, the site is flooded, the Doric columns lay in ruins, and the solemn 20-foot tall statue of Lincoln has eroded down to a bland nub by the caustic black tar that Grimbard lovingly calls The Sludge.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 1d

BRUNEI.BMF

The flag of Brunei, a monarchy on the northern coast of Borneo. The yellow background of the flag represents the Sultan of Brunei, the black and white diagonal stripes represent Brunei’s ministers, and the red crest with its crescent and parasol represent Islam and the monarchy, respectively. There’s just one problem with the flag: the official flag features just one black diagonal and one white diagonal, whereas this flag shows the black diagonal bounded by a white diagonal on both sides. Notably, in the underground cult movie “Clip/Art Film,” it is this clipart, at eight hours and sixteen minutes in, that the relatively static handheld camera switches to a Ken Burns-style pan, starting in the lower right corner and slowly working its way along the stripes to the upper left corner, zooming out as it does so, but with a slight shakiness indicating the camera is still hand-held. Guttural muttering can be heard during the pan, but it’s incomprehensible. Audiences frequently point to this moment in “Clip/Art Film” when general astonishment at the project morphs to vague unease.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 1d

YANKEEO.BMF

The international maritime signal flag for Y, or Yankee. It’s a series of red and yellow diagonal stripes. When flown by itself, the flag means “I am dragging my anchor.” Translation: my anchor has come unmoored and my boat is drifting. We are all of us dragging our anchors these days. Yankee, yankee, yankee, all around.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 1d

PCAR.BMF

A blue and white highway patrol car circa 1990. It’s a Ford LTD Crown Victoria, the most common police car of the era, seen in hundreds of cop shows and movies. Sometimes when Officer Price of the California Highway Patrol is driving the I-5 he feels like he’s riding a prop and that the ribbon of highway stretching ahead is nothing but a sound stage. And the stream of cars all around are full of extras. That’s LA Syndrome, his partner tells him. Suddenly a maroon Jaguar flies by. Price flips on the sirens and takes off after the Jaguar. Only, hell, where did it go? It’s gone. His partner says, Fucking Hollywood man, nothing here is real.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 1d

THREAD.BMF

The spiraling threads on a brass screw. Lou holds the screw in his hand, admiring its machine-precisioned perfection. He tosses the screw to the side and continues riffling through the tower of tiny drawers on his basement workbench. He’s decided to make something—a birdhouse, maybe? a bench? he’s not sure—and he’s only going to use scraps and remnants. He’s looking for the most wrecked of his screws, the stripped screws he’s saved for some reason, the ones with the threads a gnarled mess of metal shavings. He’s not sure where this compulsion comes from, this need to salvage junk. He’d like to ask Dianne what she thinks, but she’s not here.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 2d

70DIVTR1.BMF

The insignia of the 70th Infantry Division of the United States Army, known as the Trailblazers. The crest shows a black fleur-de-lis on a field of red, accompanied by a partial fleur-de-lis on both the left and right. The Trailblazers were active on the European front in World War Two. The division sustained significant casualties, including 755 dead and 54 missing in action. Among the MIA were Dianne’s great-uncle, whose last letters home were redacted to such a point that only articles and adjectives were left.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 2d

URIN.BMF

A line drawing of the male urinary system. The ureters thread down from two kidneys into the bladder. And from the bladder extends the urethra. Somewhere in this system a nephrolith takes shape, a tiny calcium oxalate deposit growing imperceptibly like a flower unfolding over the span of years. Now it is four millimeters in diameter, secret and unknown in Father John’s body as he says mass, turning wine into blood and bread into fresh. A year from now, maybe two, Father John will awaken in the dark in exquisite agony. Unendurable screams will fill the rectory. A wailing curse upon God, Satan, and all their creations.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 2d

ANCHOR5.BMF

A black and white line drawing of a pair of anchors arranged like an X, their lines wrapped around each other. What was it Melville said about anchors? Rod grabs the only book on the tidy desk in his captain’s cabin. He thumbs through the dogeared pages. Anchors. Anchors and history? Something about anchors and mortality? What’s the line he’s looking for? Rod finds it in Chapter 70, The Sphynx. “Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home.”

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 2d

PROOFRED.BMF

A brunette woman dressed professionally in a bright lime blazer and softer seafoam skirt. She’s looking over proofs of the business proposal that Rose designed to her specifications, some sort of new dot com media portal catering to women. Rose was too focused on the layout to absorb the details of the proposal. While the woman nods approvingly at Rose’s work, Rose’s expert eye surveys the woman. Blazer: rgb(117, 251, 77). Skirt: rgb(162, 252, 144). Skin: rgb(245, 191, 151). Lips: rgb(181, 79, 72). Hair: black, black, black as the void in Rose’s heart.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 2d

BOOK_A.BMF

A closed photo album. Red picks it up from the coffee table and pages through it. Family reunions in matching t-shirts, beach resorts with closeups of parrots and frozen cocktails, the Grand Canyon, unimaginably vast in real life but reduced on the page to two inches of stone and sky. Red thinks it is a nice photo album. Red thinks it is a nice house. Red thinks it is a nice family. Red slides one photograph from the plastic sleeve of the album and slips it into a pocket. He gently sets the photo album down on the table. He leaves the house the way he came in, silently, in the dark, through an unlocked door.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 2d

PONY.BMF

A carousel pony. Evelyn dreams she’s a girl again, riding the carousel at the fair while her mom and dad look on. In her dream the carousel is massive. It takes hours to go around even once. She holds on to the striped post loosely with one hand. Calliope music fills the air. Suddenly a thunderous pipe organ drowns out the calliope and the carousel spins wildly faster, the pony seeming to gallop now while Evelyn screams. She clings onto the pony’s mane with both hands and looks over to her mom and dad. Where they stood there is only a mound of ashes, scattering in the wind.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 2d

MO.BMF

A shaded outline of the Great State of Missouri. Also known as the Cave State thanks to the thousands of caverns hollowed out in the porous limestone bedrock across the state. In 1967 three teenage boys ducked out of school early to explore a series of caves near their hometown of Hannibal. The boys never returned. An extensive search of over two miles of underground passages turned up no trace of the teenagers. Fifty years later researchers returned to the vast cave network equipped with lidar and other advanced imaging technology. The researchers uncovered faded runes deep within the rocky tunnels but still, no boys. One hundred years later, long after Hannibal itself has cratered into sulfurous sinkholes, the three bewildered teenagers emerge from a rocky outcropping overlooking the dusty riverbed of the Mississippi. The boys are brothers Joey and Billy and their friend, Craig, all the same biological age as they were the Tuesday they disappeared in 1967.

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 2d

SPIELBE1.BMF

A color portrait of American film director Steven Spielberg. When this clipart came out in 1994, Spielberg already had made a sensational string of films: Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. (1982), Jurassic Park (1993), and Schindler’s List (1993). Yet to come were many more remarkable movies: Minority Report (2002), Munich (2005), Lincoln (2012), West Side Story (2021), Bullitt (2026), and his final film, a return to the sci-fi horror work of his early years, Obsidian Eclipse (2027).

Corel Gallery Clipart @clipart.bsky.social · 3d

NOTE_PAD.BMF

A notepad illustrated with a rugged mountain range at the top of every page. Behind the mountain range the sun is dawning, illuminating the sky in majestic purple and magenta tones. A mist floats in from the east. Frodo jots down his to-do list on the notepad: (1) return ring; (2) B is sus, why?; and (3) ditch Sam, y’all I need some space.