Tag: furlough

  • BAMF vs The Shutdown

    This next episode from life at the Bureau of Government Intelligence and Execution—aka BOGIE—introduces the Bureau of Administration, Management, and Facilities. DC may shut its doors on the public workers who serve the Republic. But that can’t stop the mofos in BAMF from installing new ones to protect its workers from America’s next shooting rampage. Also…

  • Essential Non-Essential

    Shutdown 2018 continues unabated, and so do excerpts from life at the  government’s Bureau of Government Intelligence and Execution—better known as BOGIE. What happens when DC’s ‘Fed Buffet’ closes its doors—and its payroll—on the public servants who work to prevent  America’s next tragedy? Furloughed, you say? Is this what you signed up for? “How do you arrive at…

  • Shutdown Chores

    Week one of Government Shutdown 2018 comes to an end, bringing to mind the plot of Patchworks. So why not run a few excerpts from Chapter 12, in which DC’s ‘Fed Buffet’ closes its doors—and its payroll—on a mix of kindly public servants who only wanted to prevent the next great American tragedy. Government intern…

  • Rock Paper Scissors Shutdown

    Rock Paper Scissors Shutdown

    Gun violence isn’t the only systemic failure of the federal government to be yodeled at with doomed futility in Patchworks. Furloughs and government shutdowns also pepper a story full of recurring small deaths. There comes a point—moments before the plot’s big turn—when two sympathetic colleagues must choose: which of them will take a round of furloughs instead of…

  • Foggy Bottom

    From DC’s skyline to its underground rail system, one has to wonder how the capital of our great Republic has come to symbolize so much decay and brokenness. Escalator outages pervade Metro, clogging the human flow. Congress teases us with shuttering the Department of Homeland Security, even in the face of recent threats. These perversions…