Squawk.

Yesterday our landlady announced that she'd joined the neighborhood knitting club. She looked so cute with her weekend hair and her big bellied boyfriend, and we'd all been chatting so nicely from our sunny corners that I chose to not share my opinions with the rest of the porch. My suspicion is that these clubs are fronts. That beneath the hum of cold industry lies a beating heart whose goal is the collection, distribution and creation of gossip. It pumps evil purpose into those soft little hands and those shining needles.

Nor did I mention my inherent distrust of The Clutch. That any gathering of three of more women becomes a disturbing example of hive mentality and that outsiders must either sue for entry or cross their fingers and pray they aren't found. Now, we live spare, innocuous lives, but detection is fairly certain, if long in coming. It's a matter of elimination. After evenings of deconstructing the neighborhood personalities--the stoned gardener accross the street, the bikini bacchanites next door--they will have to move to lighter fare. Eventually, there will come a day of No News. And on that day, they will turn their bloody beaks around and find something dreadfully intriguing about that quiet couple with their books and their laptops and their glasses of iced tea.