Selected Salvos Blog: The Cutie on the Cannon

Since nobody asked me why my Selected Salvos 2 book cover features a beauty balanced atop the barrel of a cannon I'll be glad to answer.

Various cannon graphics have been part of my identity ever since I first talked my way into my first online professional writing gig in 2001. A site called NewsGuy.com was offering $50 per article for "Feature Writers" and I pitched them on a libertarian column. It was a general interest site with other onliners babbling on about food and homemaking and cars and angst-riddled accounts of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

My Newsguy logo: Cannon with a red L for "libertarian."

I figured with this kind of readership anyone who stumbled into my libertarian territory would instantly label me as a loose cannon so I labeled myself first; The Loose Cannon Libertarian. After my pay-for- posting position disappeared I put out my own shingle under the same name on my own website which still exists today in its achingly ancient Microsoft FrontPage format.

My animated website cannon: Chipping away at the war against freedom

Since all my book-bound articles come from those early Loose Cannon Libertarian days that explains the cannon. And it also explains my reedcannon@aol.com email address.

So what about the lissome lass balanced atop the boom barrel?

The theme of Salvos 2 is "Playboynomics" as expostulated in two of the main articles, "Tax Dollars for Sex Scholars" and "The Playboy School of Economics."

Both bits of art come from open sources on the net, and I was actually able to trace both back to their origins, a rare achievement on the Internet.

The eye candy atop the cannon is one of countless variations of the "mudflap girl." The original bright silver silhouette seen on tractor trailer mudflaps all over American highways was designed in the 1970s by Bill Zinda of Wiz Enterprises to promote his line of truck and auto accessories. It entered the public domain in June, 2011.

The particular pulchritudinous pretty one on my cover is one of many "trucker girls" and was offered as a free vector download on pixgood.com.

The cannon has its own Provenance. It's called, if it's identified at all, as the Ortner Cannon and is the work of Eric Ortner. Created in 2009 it's described as his "graphic translation of a revolutionary war cannon." It's also described as "Public Domain (free to use)."

Now you know the backstory about the loose lady adorning the loose cannon.

I've named her Shannon O'Cannon, "She of the Free."