Swapmeat

Sometimes I think stuff like, "dude, everybody is such a merchant."

But its actually really tough to not be a merchant.

Way harder than it seems.

'Cause of the way we're programmed for survival, and the way our brains work, and the way we communicate in metaphors, pretty much all we are is value-sorting machines, trying to make a buck and get a step ahead.

And you can be a merchant of ideas, too.

And you can sell yourself on your own ideas.

And you might be selling yourself when you make friends with people.

So its not as simple as it looks.

Of course, if there ain't nothing that you want from folks, then why the hell are you sticking around and bugging 'em?

And if there ain't nothing that you want from folks, then why the hell are you sticking around and letting them pull their sales pitches on you?

See, its pretty tough to break out of that loop heh.

You help somebody, and then they're all like, "I owe you, man."

Like its a credit system or something heh.

And then you're all like, "you don't owe me anything."

And they're all like, "is this some kind of trick?"

And you're all like, "naw, uh, if you need to pay it off, just do something nice for somebody else or something."

Getting paid to do heroic things kinda ruins the heroic part, y'know?

Its like it lowers the heroic value of it by however much you get paid ahaha.

Gawd its hard to break out of that loop, ain't it?

And I think sometimes we make fun of our buddies, as we're trying to cheer 'em up, so that they'll feel like they don't gotta worry about paying it off.

Y'know, like, you start your joke with a slam, and then add something at your own expense on to the end of it, something self-deprecating, so that everything comes out even in the end and nobody feels like they need to dig out their wallets heh.

Self-deprecating humor is so Last Friday man ahaha.