Okay, we have got to talk about this situation with the ports. I mean ...

Psych. I totally don't care. Okay, not necessarily true. As long as my government doesn't allow people to guard our borders who, I dunno, want to kill me, I'm okay with it. I know so little about, well, a lot of stuff, that I won't even pretend to have a real opinion on this ports deal in NY. How's that for a well-informed journalist?

So onto more important topics. Glamour shots. I'm getting them done, for work. Kinda. Okay, so we all know the gist, I'm in a new position, in a supposedly revitalized bureau of our paper. This new team is apparently going to be the first group of reporters/editor marketed to our circulation-starved coverage area.

Great.

Cue camera-shy Christine's fear of ending up on a billboard.

Apprently we'll be in house ads and distributed "in the community," whatever that means. Hello?....I'm not a broadcaster? We're all a little nervous about the ordeal, and it's still unclear exactly where outside of the actual paper they're going to be plastering our faces. (And bodies - we are taking group and individual full-body shots, after all.)

In one way, it could be great. It could get us the (uh, clothed) exposure the paper needs in our target area, and convince readers we're there in the community dedicated to covering them. Or...it could be "Anchorman." With all of us striking ill-timed cheesy poses. Yikes.

I never thought I would be so happy that the majority of you readers of this fair blog live outside of the Chicagoland area. Thank God for small blessings. For those of you who live inside its tenuous walls, look hard for issues of the paper. Because whenever they hit newsstands, I'll be buying ALL of them.