40 Comments
User's avatar
Bill Southern's avatar

Michael, you have received a unique and wondrous gift: a cactus sprouting loaves of bread (well, half-eaten loaves of bread, anyway) - you lucky bastard!

Michael Estrin's avatar

Excellent take! I'll save a fortune on bread.

Dona Fox's avatar

You. The author. It’s always the author. It’s no hallucination, Claude is merely refusing to play along. If you’re a butler that might add an interesting twist without straying into fantasy.

Michael Estrin's avatar

That's the problem with AI, it's no fun at all

Andrew Paul Koole's avatar

1. By pursuing one mystery, you stumbled upon another: the local Israeli-bread bandit. The night before, your resident sustenance swindler had strolled down your back street, swallowing his latest spoils, when he spotted the police hot on his trail and had to ditch the last half of his loaf. Cactus caught the evidence.

Liza Blue's avatar

Nicely done. Bread in a cactus will become the next crowd- sourced gaslighting item like bras in a tree or shoes on a telephone line.

Michael Estrin's avatar

Dare to dream

Anne Kadet's avatar

Excellent description of Nextdoor!

Anna Schott's avatar

Valley of the Bread

Kim Smyth's avatar

Turns out I love Reading comedy a lot more than Watching it!

Michael Estrin's avatar

They hit different don’t they?

Kim Smyth's avatar

They really do!!

tab's avatar

I think it's some kind of bird that was planning on making an edible nest, sort of like the edible bowls for soup.

Harry Bosch because, "Every Key Counts or No Key Counts"

Michael Estrin's avatar

I like the bread bowl theory of the case

KdD's avatar

My theory is that Christina is trying to be helpful by giving you mysteries to solve.

I like to try to find out the answer. My wife likes to make up a story.

I know that hawks like to TRY to eat ducks. They killed one of my daughter’s duck and wounded another. It appears they try to catch them by their neck.

I would only hire Harry if I suspected that my keys had killed someone trying to snitch on them.

Michael Estrin's avatar

I think you're right. This mystery has Christina written all over it

Michael Jensen's avatar

DID YOU TASTE THE BREAD?!?!?!

Michael Estrin's avatar

Couldn’t. Too stale

Michael Jensen's avatar

There are ways to fix that. JUST ASK CLAUDE!!! WHAT KIND OF JOURNALIST ARE YOU?!?!? REFUND!!! REFUND!!!

Oh, wait…

Michael Estrin's avatar

I think the fix is in. I’m gonna need more backup.

C.L. Steiner's avatar

1. Many unexplained variables: type of bread? front or back yard? Front yard — wandering itinerant. Back yard — no idea.

2. Ignore. Marlowe got beaten up too often for a mysterious partial loaf.

3. Good heavens! Have you ever seen a hawk’s beak?

4. If those are the only choices, it’s Bosch all the way.

5. The tension is higher in an election year. Unless the fix is in.

Michael Estrin's avatar

The fix is in

Michael Maupin's avatar

1. I’m still waiting to learn who put the bop in the bop-shoo-bop-shoo-bop!

Jessica Sitton's avatar

Well according to Chuck Prophet, “you did.”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dSiyjqtWwJk

Michael Maupin's avatar

VERY NICE. @Chuck Prophet can likely verify!

Sheila Moeschen's avatar

I agree with Carlos--it's a message. The Gluten Mafia has had it with those fucking rice flour, oat flour, rye flour, and goddamn whatever the hell SPELT flour bastards trying to horn in on old school territory. It's war; everyone is going to the flour sacks. Lay low. It's too hot for you.

Michael Estrin's avatar

Way too hot! I can’t take on the entire gluten mafia. If anything happens to me tell my story. Then run for your life.

Sheila Moeschen's avatar

YOU WON’T BE DISAPPEARED ON OUR WATCH! Absurd Slacker Noir Journalism WILL BE AVENGED!

J. W. (Jeff) Kingsley's avatar

Okay, first of all, it’s a euphorbia, not a cactus. Those damn cacti are always trying to get others in trouble. I suspect the neighbor’s Opuntia, which is clearly visible snickering in the background.

Second, Einstein workshopped that line a lot, I mean, seriously like, a lot. And since he put a lot of work into it, at least do him the service of quoting his more carefully edited spontaneous quip, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

Michael Estrin's avatar

This sounds like an application to join the cold case team. You’re hired.

Good Humor by CK Steefel's avatar

1. It was the eagle that accidentally dropped a salmon into our ex neighbor’s pool. He did it.

2. I am the worst kind of Agatha Christie. I want to know who put their empty pizza box in our garbage can and not our recycle bin and was it a drive by garbaging?

5. Aren’t those lawn signs bad for the environment?

Michael Estrin's avatar

I want answers about the pizza box too!