And the fact that it won't look at what's on the clipboard, and use those dimensions when I go to file->new

Shift-control-V creates a new buffer with the content (and dimensions) of the clipboard. If you want a *blank* new buffer of the same size as the copied object, do shift-control-V and then control-dot to erase the image (I'm not sure what's the need for this but as you can see it's easy to do)

you got it backward - it should be tail -f | grep -v

It's made from the painting "L'origine du monde" ("The origin of the world", hence the power button). You can read about it by searching "L'origine du monde" on wikipedia (WARNING - Even MORE NSFW because they have the painting without that power button!)
So, the original painter probably wanted to say that everything in our world comes from a woman's vagina, (and in more than one way! I let you find other interpretations of that ;) ), in a very provocative way.

The "turn on" (sexually) aspect of the "power button" was (probably) not meant in the original painting, however.