Bureau of Ordinary Concern
An institution of exceptional concern.
The founding office, the expansion of its mandate, and the regrettable matter of first contact.
Institutional record · Archive 00
A distinguished history of exceeding our remit.
Compiled by the Office of Institutional Memory. Certain dates have been adjusted to accommodate the office’s recollection of them.
1894–1908 · The founding concern
An office is established before a purpose is identified.
The Bureau traces its origins to a memorandum concerning a man who entered a waiting room through a door the committee preferred people not to use. The man was delivering the replacement door. Nevertheless, a subcommittee was appointed to determine whether his arrival represented a pattern. Its first finding was that arrivals, considered collectively, were increasing every time somebody arrived.
The resulting Office for the Preliminary Consideration of Persons Possibly From Elsewhere occupied two rooms above a stationery supplier. One room received concerns. The other certified that the first room had received them. The founding charter described the office as an immigration bureau, although no government had requested one and nobody could establish which country the upstairs landing belonged to. This was considered an opportunity for expansion.
1909–1936 · Standardizing the familiar
The Bureau develops a rigorous definition of “around here.”
Early inspectors were instructed to identify departures from local custom. Local custom was defined as whatever the inspector remembered from childhood, excluding anything embarrassing. Because inspectors had grown up in different places, every inspector was immediately found noncompliant by another inspector. An internal amnesty was issued on Bureau letterhead, which the Bureau then investigated for excessive decorative flourishes.
The Linguistic Familiarity Section followed. Its first director spoke one language and considered this a useful control condition. He proposed that all conversations be submitted in a vocabulary he personally recognized. The proposal failed when a plumber used the word flange. After six hearings, the plumber was cleared and the word was placed on a provisional watchlist. The plumbing remained unresolved until the director learned a second word.
1937–1961 · The machinery of belonging
A measuring instrument is commissioned for an unmeasurable feeling.
During the period of administrative modernization, the Bureau acquired a Belonging Assessment Apparatus: a mahogany cabinet containing a compass, a tea strainer, and a photograph of the chairman looking unconvinced. Operators entered their suspicions through a slot. The apparatus returned the same suspicions on heavier paper. This was the first independently corroborated output in the Bureau’s history, provided one did not ask what independent meant.
A national registration campaign was proposed, then quietly limited to registering the office furniture. The chairman’s chair failed to demonstrate ancestral continuity with the building and was removed pending appeal. His replacement chair also failed. By the end of the year the committee was meeting on the floor, which had been imported, creating a constitutional difficulty the Bureau resolved by misplacing its own constitution.
1962–1983 · Jurisdictional growth
The map is enlarged to accommodate the mandate.
Having exhausted its authority over the upstairs landing, the Bureau extended its operational area to every place a member of staff could point at from a window. A new telescope brought the Moon within scope. An entry questionnaire was dispatched requesting the Moon’s previous address, purpose of visit, and intended length of stay. The Moon did not reply. Its continued presence was recorded as an administrative attitude.
The Bureau subsequently opened a Lunar Liaison Office in a cupboard facing east. Its director received a remote-posting allowance despite never leaving the cupboard. A twelve-year inspection established that the Moon had been visible before the Bureau was founded, a fact the committee described as suspiciously convenient. The report recommended further observation, a larger cupboard, and reimbursement for biscuits consumed under conditions of reduced gravity.
1984–1997 · The first-contact incident
For once, “not from around here” is technically accurate.
The Bureau’s first extraterrestrial visitors arrived on a Tuesday with a translation device, a gift of clean energy, and a perfectly reasonable request for directions. Reception referred them to the Immigration and Interplanetary Familiarity Counter. There they encountered Form OC–7, which required a country of origin, a county of origin, and the name of a local person who could confirm that the universe existed.
The delegation entered a spiral galaxy in the country field. The form rejected spiral galaxies. They entered the nearest star. The form rejected punctuation. They explained that their civilization predated the concept of counties. An officer wrote “evasive” in the margin. After translating the entire form into 374 languages, the visitors were criticized for not using plain language. They departed peacefully, leaving the clean-energy device behind. It has powered the photocopier ever since.
1998–2018 · The Galactic Familiarity Accord
An interstellar agreement recognizes none of our powers.
Subsequent negotiations produced the Galactic Familiarity Accord, a document signed by eleven star systems and nobody on Earth. Article One confirmed the Bureau’s right to have an opinion. Article Two clarified that this did not require anyone else to obey it. The Bureau celebrated the agreement as international recognition and opened a Directorate for the Implementation of Article One.
Its next inspection concerned dark matter, which was accused of being everywhere without making itself adequately visible to the chairman. The investigation collapsed when the scientific adviser explained that most of the universe was unfamiliar to him. He recommended investigating the chairman’s expectations instead. The adviser was transferred to Expectations, where he discovered that the department consisted of one drawer containing a mirror. The mirror remains the Bureau’s most productive instrument.
2019–present · A finding about the findings
The archive finally examines its own assumptions.
A comprehensive institutional review found no founding statute, no recognized jurisdiction, and no evidence that the waiting-room delivery had required an investigation. The celebrated original charter turned out to be the stationery supplier’s receipt. The supposed ministerial seal was a coffee ring. The director of the Lunar Liaison Office had, for some years, been a coat hanging on the cupboard door. It nevertheless received an excellent performance review.
The extraterrestrial delegation was invited to chair the final hearing. Having considered the Bureau’s entire archive, its spokesperson asked whether anybody in the original waiting room had actually done anything wrong. The committee requested a recess of ninety minutes, extended it by 132 years, and eventually recorded the question as the first useful item of business ever received. No further investigation was recommended. The photocopier was switched off.
The conclusion, for the record
If the Moon’s immigration paperwork was the point at which you began to suspect we had invented this institution, your assessment is correct. The cupboard, the coat, the galactic treaty: all made up. The habit of dressing prejudice in official language is the part we did not have to invent.
That is the joke. The Bureau has spent a very long fictional history investigating everything except its own assumptions. Here is the shorter, completely straightforward account of what this website actually is.
A small bureau. A necessary distinction.
Our mandate is to distinguish a threat from an unfamiliar lunch.
The Bureau of Ordinary Concern exists at the administrative intersection of certainty, discomfort, and very little evidence.
Our entirely fictional mandate
We receive accounts of everyday life being treated as suspicious: a language someone does not speak, a custom someone has not encountered, a person whose belonging is subjected to unsolicited review. We classify the assumption. We do not classify the person.
The questions are absurd because the logic they imitate is absurd. A serious font can give almost any prejudice the appearance of a procedure.
Familiarity is not a qualification for belonging.
Independent Satire — Not a Government Agency
This is an independent political satire project criticizing xenophobia, racial profiling, and immigration paranoia. The Bureau is fictional. It is not affiliated with ICE, DHS, or any federal, state, or local government. The emblem, forms, classifications, and case references are original fictional designs.
We have no enforcement authority, do not investigate anyone, and do not forward submissions to government agencies. Nothing here is a real immigration-reporting channel, legal advice, or an emergency service.
Who the joke is about
The target is the machinery that converts difference into suspicion: the form, the official tone, the confidence that arrives before the facts. Immigrants and people subjected to profiling are not the punchline.
A note on the record
Submissions stay in a private moderation queue and are never displayed publicly. No names, addresses, contact information, immigration-status details, or allegations identifying another person are permitted. Read how information is handled.