"This is NOT civilization!"

Well, it's been a while since anyone posted on this blog. Perhaps you thought City Dangers was defunct, but I'd like to thank our loyal followers. Hi, Dad! Oh ... he left too? Awkward.

New business. I wait in line, then sell my front-row spot to the highest bid.

It turns out that a sizable city danger is the trap wherein you spend much of your free time working to support your urban lifestyle. A lifestyle you then cannot enjoy because your brain is Jell-o from squinting at Photoshop for 11 hours. Or, you know, solving world hunger. However you might be employed.

This Halloween, my reward for those long hours is a break from Chicago to visit an exotic and uniquely scary place: our nation's capital. Ostensibly, I am headed there to have sib bonding time and to reunionize with much-missed friends. But, there is also the matter of the small get-together on the National Mall called the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

The Stewart/Colbert brainchild may be a flop or it may turn out to be '08 Inauguration levels of amazing. I'm going to find out, but either way, the event is guaranteed to pose a couple of dangers for me personally: 1) dense crowds limiting my mobility and 2) competing with me for Porta Potties.

OK, to be clear, I am not an agoraphobe. I regularly leave my house and I've never come close to a panic attack. But 'fear of losing control in a public place' yeah...I'm familiar with that. Am I interpreting 'losing control' as 'cutting a bitch'? Possibly.

If I cannot walk down a sidewalk quickly and freely, I will stop being polite and start getting real. A prickly feeling overcomes me every time I am caught behind the slow-strolling masses on Michigan Avenue. Even if I'm not in a rush to be someplace, I can barely suppress my urge to barrel though the obstacle course of Disney-Store-bag-toters screaming, "Sheep! GO-OOOOO!" For the record, I also feel the same in El stations. And airport concourses. And my corner grocery. [Realizing I may just be a horribly impatient person.]

When push comes to shove, and it sometimes has, I can usually breathe deeply and control my compulsion to ram through crowds like Cartman drilling through hippies. However, lack of access to bathrooms, even Porta Potties, can take me several levels down the evolutionary chain in a matter of minutes.

A recent trip to a college town at homecoming planted me in the middle of this exact horror. During a desperate, hour-long wait for one of TWO (2!!) Porta Potties at a giant parking lot bar (yes, a bar in a parking lot), I witnessed a Lord of the Flies-style collapse of social standards. Boys openly flaunting their ability to relieve themselves wherever they wished. The resulting rivers of urine. Girls waging war over perceived cutting. Rival line factions arranging who would go first and for how long before the door was broken down. Me, wild-eyed and yelling to no one in particular, "This is NOT civilization!" Duh. It's college. Also, stop drinking.

So, imagine if you will, my terror upon reading that there might be limited PP access at the Rally. I might need to rework my costume for a bathroom contingency plan.

I am sure this Halloween will be a highly memorable one. Whether out of sheer awesomeness or a display of neuroses that forces my brother to abandon me to the will of the mob...well, you'll have to tune in next week to find out.