Most Highly Esteemed Editor in Chief:
Here I am, sitting in the pressroom with Mme. Ambassador Kathryn Harris, her Deputy Ambassador Plenipotentiary Linda Tripp, and their very buff sextet of 17-year old native bodyguards, showing them the latest volume of Magellan's Log on Kathryn's laptop. I'm working out here in suburban Pamplemousse, rather than in downtown N'Djamena at the Magellan's Log Chad Bureau, because I've recently learned that the American Embassy has 24/7 electricity, unlike the frequently interrupted service in rest of our utterly impoverished but still surprisingly valiant little democracy. (We had an election in 1973 that unanimously swept our current President Col. Bouche into office for life by a 74-to-zero vote, and you can't get much more democratic than that outside of Florida.)

How the embassy gets all these megawatts is unfathomable to me (this may become the subject of one of my future dispatches), although Linda mentioned something about having them FedExed in from hydroelectric generating plants in Florida. (I think that would explain all those mysterious FedEx boxes the embassy gets every day, and also why they need to specify weekend delivery.) Whatever it is that they are doing, "it works for me", as you like to say in the USA.

I was showing "the gals" (as they encourage me to refer to them -- nothing stuffy about these fine, well-bred ladies) our website, which they found entertaining yet also highly educational and very useful in their work, when we noticed the listing of Magellan's Log features ranked by recent reader popularity. I was of course amazed and gratified to see that The Chad Report was in second place, outranked only by the YETI Report. (Where exactly is that country?) But then I also noticed that my collected dispatches were described as "(humor)". Let me assure you that when I saw this, my heart plunged to the bottom of my chest cavity like an overripe coconut falls to the ground when overfed vultures perch on it in October. Indeed, I nearly choked on my grapefruit, or, to be more accurate, on one of Mme. Harris' grapefruits, since it is from her vast Florida citrus plantation that these succulent fruits are FedExed to Chad every day.

I have no doubt that this "humor" characterization was due to some inadvertently displaced piece of HTML code, but that does not make the error any less serious. You and I both know that what I do here in my 90-hour weeks -- motivated by my devotion to journalism, love of country, and the generous stock options that Magellan's Log offers to all who are willing to work long and hard -- is INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING. Remember, that's the box we agreed to check off last week when we filled out the forms for our Pulitzer Prize submission. If the U.S. officials here (or President Col. Bouche) were to notice this little mechanical error, it could well diminish the credibility of what I am working so diligently to accomplish here. Fortunately, "the gals" were so fascinated by the Tasteless Jokes pages that they did not notice the error. Yes, it pleases me to say that for all their power and importance, these ladies also know how to enjoy a good laugh and are not ashamed to do so, even in front of their bodyguards.

So, while I was able to avoid being discredited through sheer luck this time, the odds are that I would not be as fortunate in the future if you continue to retain the _status quo ante_. So allow me to recommend in all humility that you re-categorize my undertakings as "third-world investigative reporting", or something similarly appropriate. If some readers elect to be amused by my occasional subtle attempts at risibility, they should be able to do this on their own without being artificially predisposed spo such by procrustean editorial pigeonholing.

I must be signing off now, since it's almost 12:30, which is when Mme. Harris voluntarily turns off all the embassy lights so as not to arouse the ire or envy of our blacked-out neighbours. Witty and gracious lady that she is, she turns this necessity into a delightful amusement, since we then all engage in the pleasurable ritual of trying to find each other in the dark and guess who it is that we found, unaided by the sense of sight, much like an adult version of your children's game blind man's bluff. I have gotten so adept at this that I can often distinguish between Ms. Tripp and her bodyguards in less that 30 seconds!