Backspace. When we walked in, the barista was up on an A-frame next to the stage, tying prayer flags to a disco ball and humming the bass track to "You Are My Sunshine" as it loped along through the mid-afternoon lull. At first the flags just hung there, like a raggedy little sibling of Sputnik at Mardi Gras, but she kept working (and humming) and pretty soon the ends were tied off to speakers, lights and even the tree house itself.

Later ...

"I see both of my parents as failures." The conversation happening in front of me is a sad one, but not for reasons that either of its participants would appreciate. Today's topic: How I, the unloved inhabitant of society's dusty outer fringe, having struggled past enormous obstacles, have become the glorious, rather attractive beacon of wisdom sitting across from you now. Obstacles listed thusfar:

1. A loving but woefully under appreciative "failure of a family" that "just holds me back ... by ... like ... existing."
2. Professors (all of them) who spend their energy not teaching, but "cramming their, like, ideas down the throats of students who just, like, don't care."
3. The entire population of Portland, Oregon, which is made up of "just, like, uppity fucks who don't get it. I mean, not you, but, like EVERYONE else."

Later ...

Now they're showing each other journal entries which contain short poems about favorite meals and, in the case of the guy, a carefully recorded quote by someone who told him he looks like James McAvoy.