Enough with the hanky-panky: I just got off the horn with Sal from the bank. You’ve done it again. You’re so deep in the red, I need 3D glasses to even see you. I don’t know how you even got that line of credit in the first place — and don’t be spoutin’ off about fiat currency this and Mazda currency that. You don’t even have two pots to rub your piss together in. And now they’re coming to me, asking about how you’re going to keep care of that boy of yours. Truth be told, I didn’t know what to say to them. I think they might be right. The only bacon you’ve been bringing home is whatever you peel off my haunches. I’m telling you Hector, these haunches are mighty sore, mighty sore indeed.

First piece of good news that comes your way in a decade… Ol’ Sylvester said he’d buy your boy’s soft ear cracklings, I’m talking about that slimy stuff, that earwax, at wholesale prices but firm by the ounce, regular-like. He said he’d be ready to get the pump running by- What? What on earth are you telling me?

Hector, you gotta listen to me on this one. There’s a time and place for pride, and there’s a time and a place where Sylvester hooks your boy up to a steampunk-lookin’ contraption so as you can get your rent done and maybe pay down your debts a little bit.

Now, Hector, now, Hector, now…

Hector.

Take it easy. Come on. That’s how business gets done round here. There’s movers, y’see, there’s shakers. Makers and takers. Sylvester’s from the good old days, he remembers how it was done. And sure, he’s an 1860’s quack doctor. And yes, yes, he uses a foot pedal to spin a succession of thirteen gears to suck wax right out of the ears of tots, toddlers, and teens alike, and he puts that gooey secretion in his opium slurry that he sells as a cure-all elixir.

But, what, you think that just because Ol’ Sylvester goes from town to town in a purple stagecoach and erects a little stage whereupon he stands with a megaphone and cries “Come one, come all, to see the marvelous herbal cure, direct from the lands of the Orient! I personally guarantee that Sylvester the Sly’s Golden Tonic is your one stop shop to cure muscle aches, wagon sores, dysentery, cholera, chakras, myopia, American Chestnut Blight, anxiety, refraction, pregnancy, oligarchy-”

If you keep interrupting me, Hector, you sniveling bastard, your little beautiful son is going to wither up right here while we’re talking. He needs a bellyfull of beans, Hector, he needs a can of toothpaste for those teeth of his.

Now I’m not saying you have to take Ol’ Sylvester up on his offer. If he doesn’t play you straight, if he tries to cheat you on the tube, if he pulls some of that false tube trickery or the classic “wax on wax off ” scam, I don’t see why you’d have to deal with him. All I’m saying is go talk to him and see if youse two can’t come to an agreement. There’s no reason not to give Ol’ Sylvester the benefit of the doubt, just because he roves the countryside in a caravan with gypsies, bandits, and sideshows and skips town every time the lawman runs him off only to return several months later with a new name and a fresh disguise. I mean, if that’s a crime, then you’d better lock us all up. Now I set the meeting up for-

Hector! You get back here! Your boy’s wax is gonna get all dried up!

That no good Hector. Can’t talk sense into him nohow.