Free Stranger and Stranger by Rob Reger

there’s just too many thoughts. Are you like that too?
    M E : What, manic-psychotic?
    BL: Hahaha, no, man, I mean nocturnal!!!
    M E : Oh. Yes.
    BL: Man, do you ever wonder why there isn’t a word for the opposite of nocturnal? I mean, what would that even be, like, “un-nocturnal”? Wow!
    M E : Um, there IS a word for that. It’s “diurnal.”
    BL: Nooooooo…waaayyyy! What does that even mean?
    M E : [Sighing.]
    BL: Oh…right.
     
    Anyway, he eventually rolled out when his true diurnal nature kicked in and he could not keep his eyes open. I should be able to avoid him most of the time, as long as I show up after midnight.

    Documentation of my progress on the mural.
    Later
    OtherMe says she has nothing special to report about her dogwalking episode. That’s right. Nothing…Special…To…Report. Interesting. Anyway, we are heading over to Town Hall now for some quality work on our Manifesto prank. Will write more later.
    Later
    Shellac!!! Am in lots of pain right now! I bailed out on the skateboard, hard. No bones broken. Not much skin broken. Some bruising. Ego somewhat crushed. Feelings slightly hurt when OtherMe ran to pick up the skate before checking on me. When she saw my look, she was all like, “What, I knew YOU were OK.” But STILL, give a girl the courtesy of checking on HER first, before you pick up the SKATEBOARD, right????
    Must shake it off. Visualize the lovely sewer mural. Imagine still, calm, beauteous pools of liquid black rock. Think of the magnificent Master Prank. Reflect on the eyes that will be opened, the souls that will be freed from their Chains of Normalcy by the glorious Manifesto of Strange!
    OK, am feeling better.
    Later
    Lots of good progress tonight. Spent several hours down in the basement of Town Hall, in the isolated room where the footage for the public-access channel gets reviewed and edited. And we completely raided that lovely library of archival footage. We cobbledand spliced and voiced-over the footage, and then painted liquid black rock right onto the film, until we had the beginnings of a beautiful, moving, inspiring Manifesto of Strange.
    You know how, when you see a horror movie featuring an Especially Strange Person, the protagonist (who is never the E.S.P.—an E.S.P. can only be an antagonist, according to the movies) must always discover some dark artifact from the E.S.P., some painting or film or scrawled notebook or wicked shrine of newspaper clippings, that hints at the extreme Depth and Horror of their Strangeness. Right? Except that the dark artifact itself, in the horror movie, is never really very Deep or Horrific, and you kind of just have to accept that all the filmmakers could do was hint at the true Depth and Horror, or risk driving their audience to madness. Well—this Manifesto of Strange that OtherMe and I made is the REAL STUFF, MAN! No one, I mean no one, I don’t even care how normal they start out, will be able to resist it. This town is going to be soooooo strange in three days’ time. Cannot wait to see it.
    (By the way, Dark Artifact = great name for a band.)
    Before we left, we snuck from one conference room to another and started modifying the A/V equipment as we went, so that each projector or PA system will be able to work as a module that can be easily plugged into a central unit in the main auditorium to become an integrated, multilamp, multichannel, multispeaker, three-dimensional projector.

    One more night of work on the Manifesto, and it’ll easily be the strangest work of art ever projected guerrilla-style into the minds of unsuspecting attendees at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in any small town, anywhere. Yesssssssss!!!!!!!
    Later
    OtherMe and I returned home, high on life and ready to take on the world, or at least some weird science, and now, just two hours later, we are sitting around in my our bedroom, using a complete and working cat translator!!!!!…Actually, all exclamation points aside, I should say that it’s kind of a