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Every year, I'm one of the many critics invited to select their top 10 albums and singles for the Village Voice's venerable (if interesting largely only to other music critics) Pazz & Jop poll. I stopped writing about music for a (fractional) living seven years ago, and most music criticism gives me hives now, but I still love music itself, and the nice thing about Pazz & Jop is that you don't actually have to wax adjectival about your picks, you're just like: White Stripes. I liked it. Boom.

In addition to writing for and editing the Love It/Shove It blog—formerly known to our five or six longtime online readers as the S/hitlist—I'll be maintaining this, a more personal blog. The title, Dogged Pessimism, refers to the fact that a.) I'm a wee bit pessimistic and b.) I like dogs.* But I'll be covering plenty of other ground in this here space, including: my Bitch-related and freelance projects and speaking engagements, embroidery and illustration, and reviews of TV, movies, books, music, and more. Emails, suggestions, gossip, and photos of your dogs are all welcome.

I've been telling people about my plans for the advice-column part of the blog, and I've been getting the same reaction over and over: "What does that have to do with feminist response to pop culture?"

Welcome to Delightfully Cranky, so named for my demeanor as described somewhere or other a long time ago. Though I guess y'all will have to judge the delightful quotient for yourselves.

I don't know if there's a clearer sign that the writer's strike is killing good television than the insanity broadcast last night on the CW.

Tonight, four of us contributors to Michelle Tea's latest anthology, It's So You: 35 Women Write about Personal Expression through Fashion & Style, read at Powell's.

Mary Christmas started the night off with the story of her illustrious career as a young New York fashion model ending with an ill-timed family move to Chicago, where modeling perms for hair salons was considered top of your game.

Perhaps my love for the short story is due to my sometimes short attention span, but if you, too, adore them, you should consider subscribing to One Story. A nonprofit literary magazine, they publish one writer's short story every few weeks. That's it—literally one short story per issue in a stand-alone chapbook, a different writer each issue. The companion website includes interviews with writers, short story events, and audio recordings from past readings.

Unions today have their share of problems. Among other things, many replicate the same corporations they're trying to fight—they're enormous, top heavy, and not responsive enough to workers or the changing political and economic climate. But they still remain one of the best forms of workplace democracy in this country, and they play a critical role in protecting our remaining labor laws.

For the third time this year, the word bitch has made national headines. Read cofounder and editorial director Andi Zeisler's take in the Washington Post.

Is it a bad word?

Events are funny beasts - we spend so much time planning them - there is worry, stress, debating over whether there should be candles or whether the program should have the mission statement on the front page or inside back cover - and then when the big day comes they take on a life of their own and magically, everything works (or doesn't but that is another blog post). I just had to write about the auction we had last Saturday night - sm[art] *art show and silent auction to benefit Bitch, because this one worked!