Word of the Day 2009 12 12: Recalcitrant

"recalcitrant
\rih-KAL-sih-truhnt\ , adjective;
1.
Stubbornly resistant to and defiant of authority or restraint."


Party, they told him. Have Fun!, they demanded. Enjoy yourself, be kind, smile, laugh, dance, eat, drink, and be merry. Just why did they have to demand so much of him? It didn’t make any goddamn sense what all the necessity of frivolous enjoyment even was. Jerry couldn’t make heads or tails of how this helped the world they lived in. Alien abductions, returning messiahs, hell, even a tidal wide from space and still these idiots pranced around their daisy fields and popped ecstasy like it was going out of style.

Jerry just couldn’t believe it.

Ever since the great swine uprising of 4074, Jerry had found himself continually abused by this one sided system. Was there no more sorrow, no pain or grief in the world any longer? Jerry doubted it. If he felt this way, then certainly others must feel the same too. Jerry sat hunched over his tofu jelly doughnut and mulled the possibility of forcing confessions of unhappiness with a pointy stick.

These thoughts and ideas had plagued Jerry since the government had mandated a constant dose of uppers to the adult population. Since then, productivity had plummeted, society had fallen apart, the world had ceased to function in any way imaginable, but people just didn’t notice. They were too blasted out of their minds on pills and powder, too terrified of another Swine Insurrection to ever consider rescinding these plans. Everything his world had stood for had slipped through his fingers in these few short years since the World Parliament delivered the shocking news. And there wasn’t a damn thing Jerry could do about it.

Not a damn thing except not enjoying himself. Since the revelation had hit him, Jerry spent each and every waking moment cursing everything possible, and even a few things not possible, in his mind. Nuns became beacons of insanity, babies were death on all fours, even puppies and kittens reeked of immorality and humanity’s demise. Jerry couldn’t find one damn thing to make him happy anymore, except for being unhappy, of course.

Moments after this thought flashed through his head, Jerry resolved to take his own life.

“It’s all a lie, a goddamn lie,” he said to the city as he closed his eyes and took a step.