THE GRAPES OF WRATH
By John Steinbeck
Shamelessly Adapted By Syd
Copyright 1997. All rights reserved. If you purchased this book without a cover you should be dragged out into the streets and shot.
If you are reading this subscript you must give me an 'A' on this. Of course, I DO deserve it.
Thoughts: Being a wiseass and somewhat of a perfectionist, I decided to make an inside cover for my children's book, complete with faux legalese. The fine print threatened death upon anyone who may have obtained an illegal copy of the book, because prior to Columbine it was funny (if not somewhat trite) for honors students to make idle threats involving extreme violence. Thanks a lot Klebold and Harris, for ruining dark comedy for future generations. I also included a line designed to contractually obligate my teacher to give me a good grade, even going so far as to say I obviously deserved it. Since one smartass comment deserves another, Mrs. Willis replied with the following: Oh yeah!? Not! So if you've ever wondered when a popular catchphrase officially becomes uncool, it's when teachers start using it. For the sarcastic Wayne's World expletive, it happened sometime in 1994. By 1997, teachers were also butchering such classic phrases as "As if!" and "He really Munsoned that one!". It's important to note that my teacher's sass was in response to that idea that she was somehow *obliged* to give me an A; I totally aced this motherfucker. It's also important to note that Mrs. Willis thought it was important to chastise my impudence, but not to correct any of my capitalization and punctuation errors. You may also notice that my first name, undoctored, appears on this page as Syd. Although I had not quite fully embraced my pseudonym at that point, I was definitely toying with it.