Petri: Will you survive the shutdown apocalypse?

What exactly does the government do?

Depending on whether you ask a Democrat or a Republican, the answer is somewhere between, "It is a glorious rainbow of helpful individuals working together for the commonweal, hanging the moon and spritzing the sky with stars and teaching all of us how to love," and, "It's primary purpose is to impede the progress of small business and deter people from developing self-sufficiency of any kind, and it wants to murder your grandmother in her sleep."

Now, it seems, we have occasion to find out who's right.

The shutdown started last week, leaving us, until further notice, in a Hobbesian state of nature. I am crouched behind a door, clutching a long knife as I type. I hope I will not be the first from my district volunteered as tribute in the Hunger Games that will inevitably ensue once shock gives way and reality sets in. I keep hearing what sound like footsteps coming to begin the culling. I will not last long.

Still, in case I make it out, I'm keeping a diary of these hours. I look forward to telling my children and grandchildren the epic tale of Life During the Shutdown. I can picture them, clustered around my knees, ignoring me as they exchange messages on their photon-based head-chips.

"Oh, yes," I will say. "Let me tell you how it went."

reading remarks into the record.

before?

home.

sobbing. They remain immobile until the government resumes normal operations.

Frustrated President-Now-Part-Lizard Obama is heard muttering about how "that might be an

improvement if they do it in time for the debt-ceiling talks."

Chuck Norris and Jose Canseco swallow several states.

1:30 a.m.: The panda cam has been off for 30 minutes. Pandas forget how to breathe in the absence of viewers to remind them. They finally do what nature intended them to do decades ago: Go extinct.