Photo courtesy huffingtonpost.comSee that picture over there? That’s a square watermelon. There’s nothing special about it. It’s not some kind of magical super-watermelon. When you cut it open, candy doesn’t fall out. It’s not even genetically engineered to be square, but was rather just kept in a box while growing by some clever farmer who figured (rightly) that if a plain old round watermelon was good, then a square one would be just awesome because……uh……it wouldn’t roll off the table?I don’t know why the square melon is supposed to be so super-fantastic, actually. But that, apparently, doesn’t matter because the important part of that photo is not the melon itself, but the price tag attached to it. I don’t know precisely where this shot was snapped, but it seems to me that some Japanese market is asking 21,000 yen for it.21,000 yen is roughly $225 USD. So whoever bought that thing, just paid nearly as much for one Japanese freak melon as I once did for a 1972 Chevy Malibu with a bad carburetor that I had to pick up in the middle of the night behind a porn store. According to Huffingtonpost.com, the Japanese have been producing small numbers of square watermelons for years (and obviously selling them for ridiculous prices to people with some fetish for square fruit), but now some farmer in Panama is hoping to be able to grow and export about 3,000 a year, which will be sold for the bargain price of just $75.In the meantime, I’ll be in my backyard, trying to grow octagonal cantaloupes and teaching myself Japanese.