In case you missed some or most of the past week, I’m here to catch you up. Such is my mandate for Sundays.

Mark managed to get an invite from Kelly Welly to Cricket Bro’s phony AI awards event to drum up donor participation, even though we missed the details of how Mark managed the invite, given Kelly’s rival nature. It would have been fun to see, and I can only imagine what transpired. Wait: This is a family strip, right? Then I have no idea. For some reason, Jules Rivera kept those details sub rosa. That should have been worth an entire week of strips!

Throughout the week, Mark was cynical and snarky. Kelly fumed and tried to shush Mark.

As Cricket Bro gave Sid Stump his “surprise” award for Best in Show, a donor guest stood up and blurted out somebody texted that another company was giving away a free AI platform. Bro and Stump froze like proverbial deer in headlights, because this unexpected announcement undercut their scam for donor contributions. They couldn’t stop everybody from leaving with their money intact and no doubt downloading the free AI on the way home. Mark laughed and Kelly Welly—in one of her better performances—started tearing out her hair in shock and frustration. That was on Saturday, and worth your time to view.

Mark gave out with one of his glib snarks, which should mark the end of this adventure. One thing is for sure: We learned next to nothing about AI and the environment.

First of all, the “Crickets are land shrimp” statement is an in-joke. This phrase originated in Jules Rivera’s lead-up to her second Mark Trail adventure (“LA Confidential”), when Mark told Rusty that Crickets were Land Shrimp (March 2021). In the story, Mark’s comment was put in a “BikBok” post by Rusty, which gave Mark 15 minutes of notoriety and an assignment in Palm Springs. Since then, “crickets are land shrimp” has become something of an in-strip meme.

Second point: I’m not a biologist. I did not do well in my college bio class, either, especially when I had to dissect a frog and discovered it was the brother of my pet frog, Oscar. Taxonomy is more complex than before, and still debated. The old Linnaean taxonomy tree has been recut and remade so many times, it makes Japanese bonsai trees look drab. Don’t take my word for this. Look it up!

Shrimp and crickets are certainly both crustaceans, and from what I’ve read, are considered more related to each other than earlier thought, but not siblings. That is, they have common ancestry, but exist in different taxonomic groups. Still, for poetic license, why not?