To the uninitiated, the Lokarto 3220 looks like an ordinary mummified tiger head.

Announcer: Introducing the Lokarto 3220, Lokarto Engineering’s newest weapon in the war against fascism. Lokarto Engineering, the most trusted name in contraband logistics, has spent nearly one decade empowering those who despise the law and those who love the law but are sometimes forced by circumstances to break it repeatedly.

“Because I’m happy where I stand,” Phil lied.

“You don’t seem happy,” Hector saw through Phil’s lie.

“Well I am!” Phil shouted, for him a typical reaction to someone’s recognizing his lies.

Sal was an idiot. An absolute moron. A stupid piece of shit. A horse’s ass. A dumb horse’s ass. In fact, he’d love to be a horse’s ass, because it would be such a step up from what he was right now: an ass’s ass.

There are a lot more dead raccoons in the roads and along the roadsides lately.

I mention the raccoons because while I am driving they are what I am sometimes seeing. It is sad to see many dead of anything, even raccoons whom some people regard as pests. I know for a fact some people regard raccoons as pests because I said to my neighbor Bill, “Hey Bill, have you seen there’s all these dead raccoons on the roads and by the sides of roads these days?” And all he said in reply – which was almost inaudible because of the low, gravelly-throat sound his voice naturally makes, and because he wasn’t looking directly at me out of apparent indifference – was that it was a good thing they were dead because it kept them out of his trashcans and “in hell.”

He added he might have killed them himself if he’d ever had the opportunity, by pancaking them to oblivion with his F-150, which he drove recklessly on local dirt and paved roads. And he smiled this sort of horrifying smile that made me just finish the conversation altogether by saying, “Oh, well goodbye.”