Salman Selfies: Author and formerly fatwaed human Salman Rushdie has posted a series of selfies at the Paris Review. I am still struggling to understand why this is a phenomenon, since people have been taking pictures of their own faces for decades.
Furnace Gets More Kindling: On Facebook, stellar reading series The Furnace has announced that their next reader will be Bellingham essayist Brenda Miller. On May 9, Miller will give a reading of new work at Hollow Earth Radio. Word is, she'll be joined by past Furnace readers, making this an all-star event.
Do Scumbag Steve Next! I highly recommend this New Inquiry study of the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme, written by Hannah Black. Here's a taste:
The Overly Attached Girlfriend began as a single image, multiply inflected with different captions. The logic of the meme: It must be instantly understood. Her huge eyes are fixed wide open in her otherwise unremarkable face, a face that avoids censure by being white, untroublingly pretty, young, etc.; all that could be condemned is held in the eyes, which won’t give up their object. She is a contemporary spin on the ancient European slur against women that they desire too much. Now, at least in most mainstream discourse, feels-shaming is more common than slut-shaming: the shame of being too much or too little, too warm or too cold, too ambivalent or too certain.
Go Ask Alice: This electronic edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is beautiful to behold, and interesting to read. It should serve as just another reminder that people who only think of e-books as electronic editions of print books, with pages and covers and a very familiar layout, are selling the e-book format short.
Conflict of Interest Alert: Here's another account of the Emerald City Comicon panel hosted by Stranger books editor Paul Constant, in which three Fantagraphics editors discuss the future of the comics publisher.
March Stumble of the Penguins: And now, for no good reason, here's a video of penguins tripping over a rope that's been circling the internet for a couple weeks.
