News of a potential Penguin-Random House merger has birthed a "binders full of women"-level meme on the literary Internet. Pearson announced yesterday that they're discussing the sale of Penguin to Random House's overlords, Bertelsmann, which could mean layoffs, lowered competition, and less bargaining power for agents and authors. The Random Penguin vs. Penguin House showdown isn't meant to downplay the seriousness of that news. This is just how the Internet processes scary consolidation news— not with a gasp of fright, but with a silly cartoon. If one were to take a (very unscientific) Twitter poll on which absurd name the new company should adopt, Random Penguin would win by a landslide. Let's take a look at who's in each corner:

Random Penguin supporters:

• Melville House (indie publisher; serial tweeter of random penguin photos)
• John Scalzi (Science fiction novelist; blogger; Penguin House loather) 
• Deborah Orr (Guardian columnist; wife of Booker-shortlisted novelist Will Self)
• Maureen Johnson (New York Times bestselling Y.A. author)

• Mary Beth Williams (Gimme Shelter author; journalist)
• Bryan Appleyard (U.K. journalist and author)
• Andrew Coyne (Canadian political columnist)
• Erin Gloria Ryan (Jezebel writer)
• Lauren E. MacLeod (literary agent)  
• Kate Hart (Y.A. blogger and author)
• ... the list goes on

Penguin House partisans: 

• McNally Jackson (New York City independent bookstore)
• Housing Works Books (another New York City bookstore)
• Beth Simone Noveck (former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer)
• A joke Twitter account that cropped up this morning

Undecided voters: 

• Rick Riordan (author of the Percy Jackson series)

You could say that Random Penguin secured a landslide victory here. But the person who actually won this meme is undoubtedly Brooklyn bookseller Emily Pullen:

Meet Simon Harper Macmillan, The Random Little Brown Penguin. #RandomPenguin flic.kr/p/n6i3a

— Emily Pullen (@corpuslibris) October 26, 2012

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David Wagner