Ok, that beard entry was up long enough to grow a beard of its own.

What's with the no-write?

Well, I want to blame it on this new "computer workstation" style desk that my girlfriend bought. It smells like formaldehyde. Phenol-Formaldehyde, to be exact. The good, dark, stuff you find in your high-end, moisture resistant, particleboard. A quality industrial smell I can usually get behind; but this desk, I dunno. In spite of being a wack-ily angled corner unit w/all sorts of computer-style keyboard trays and a cylon-warrior shaped monitor shelf, it feels totally boxy and generic. Maybe because it's finished in the blandest possible birch veneer... What kind of a hack designer clads a cylon-shelf in birch veneer?

I'm not saying I need a Victorian writing desk with incised carvings and leathered surface upon which to compose, or a staid walnut tambour to protect my budding prose from the prying eyes of our domestic help, but I've tried writing on several occasions at this desk and each session has resulted in naught but a painful case of the literary dry-heaves. So, since I'm a genius, I conclude that this desk must be defective.

But, as guilty as this desk is (destined by design to sit in the corner), it's not the real reason I haven't been writing . A deep sadness has taken root in our house and borne, recently, evil fruit. Not a fruit as overtly evil as this one, mind you:

but just as fucked up, unfortunately.

I made a batch of my trademark Ernst lemonade last weekend and, whilst harvesting our backyard lemon tree, encountered this pernicious specimen glowering down from thorny heights.

A citrus of the highest satanic order, obviously