The Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Prize for Chemistry shall be awarded to Jane D. Stumpbucket for her outstanding efforts to strengthen the process of making caramel apples. Dr. Stumpbucket displayed extraordinary efforts in her attempts to revive the flagging cottage industry of wrapping apples in sheets of caramel. The carmel-apple industry had been on a decline worldwide owing to indifference until Dr. Stumpbucket's rigorous work redefined it and reinvigorated it, giving hope to countless crafters and cooks worldwide.

Dr. Stumpbucket wrote:My idea, and it is my idea, is that you first insert a stick into the apple, from the stem end. Not the bottom, but the stem end. If the stem is more than 2 cm long, remove the stem with a paring knife, making sure that you have a knife-proof glove on your left hand. That is if you are right handed. If you are left handed, put the knife-proof glove on your right hand. I will not be responsible if you put the knife-proof glove on the hand holding the knife.

Grasping the apple firmly in your left hand, if you are right handed, insert a stick with a rectangular cross section exactly 4 cm straight into the apple. Some people have used round sticks but this allows the apple to turn on the stick while you apply the caramel wrap.

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Now grasp the stick with your left hand with the apple uppermost. Take a sheet of caramel, which is made specially for this process and which you have separated from its plastic wrapper. The plastic wrapper should have been made from recycled plastic. Place the center of the sheet on the bottom of the apple, which is now the top of the apple. Carefully fold the caramel sheet around the apple, working from top to bottom, stretching the caramel over the equator of the apple. This is why you want a rectangular stick. It keeps the apple from turning on the stick and helps get an even coat of caramel. The devil is in the details.

Press the remainder of the caramel onto the apple. Use the tips of your fingers.

While doing this put your tongue in your right cheek, if you are right handed. If you are left handed, put your tongue in your left cheek.

Hold the apple by the end of the stick with your left hand, if you are right handed, and pick up a union-made portable hair dryer with your right hand. Turn the apple in front of hair dryer until the caramel closely adheres to the apple. Do not overheat or the caramel will melt and fall off. Do not spin the apple too fast or the carmel will fly off.

Do not hold the apple in front of your TelePrompTer. If the hair dryer blows melted carmel onto the glass of the TelePrompTer you might without meaning to say a blood libel in Chinese or if your TelePrompTer is displaying these instructions, you might shove the apple into a bodily orifice requiring a visit to the Emergency Room.

This technique of mine, and it is my technique and nobody else's but mine was done despite the complete indifference of the military/industrial complex of the United States of America, and without any sponsorship whatsoever of the pharmaceutical companies of the United States of America.

I dedicate my method of making caramel apples to those victims of American Imperialism everywhere and to the victims of the American capitalist system.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Dr. Stumpbucket captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better caramel apple. Dr. Stumpbucket has pioneered a new climate in the art of making caramel apples and has raised it to a precise science. In doing so Dr. Stumpbucket has shown that she can rise above the cultural oppression that she felt in the United States of America as a full-time maker of caramel apples, and gives hope to other people to follow their own muses, whether it is making popcorn balls, peanut brittle, styrofoam balls with glitter pinned onto them, or dolls out of large erasers.

So great was Dr. Stumpbucket's contribution to the uplift of personkind that the Nobel Committee felt it overshadowed all other achievements in the prior year, including Dr. David Austin's discovery of a genetic therapy which could cure cancer, cost less than US$1.00 per dose, and would be presented without royalties. We felt that Dr. Austin did not display a sufficient consideration for the feelings of personkind because once, when he was a Boy Scout, he flew the American flag in his front yard.

The Nobel Committee calls for more funding of cooking and crafts to prevent more suffering like that of Dr. Stumpbucket and we hope that the prize will enable young caramel-apple makers to continue their craft without the adversities visited on Dr. Stumpbucket by the American capitalist system.

Stockholm.

I dunno, if Nobel Committee properly vets Dr. Stumpbucket's technique, they may find that the use of the hair dryer requires energy which causes carbon dioxide emissions which contribute to global warming (not as much as Algore farting after eating a big steak dinnner on his private jet, but Dr. Stumpbucket is not a connected prog and Al is, so eff her.) Plus, the use of caramel is clearly racist symbolism although the Committee might like the idea of shoving the apples where the moon don't shine instead.

All in all, a good try, but the committee will probably go for the safe choice and give the Nobel Prize for Chemistry to Obama for his new method of mixing wine and cheese or something.

Caramel covered apples is so bourgeois. Why not tar covered beets?

Hmmm. Doesn't the Nobel Prize Committee now operate on what someone is going to do? There was this chemistry grad student I heard about at Princeton. Did really well in school, people are expecting great things from him. Surely that deserves a Nobel Prize?

Hold the apple by the end of the stick with your left hand, if you are right handed, and pick up a union-made portable hair dryer with your right hand. Turn the apple in front of hair dryer until the caramel closely adheres to the apple. Do not overheat or the caramel will melt and fall off. Do not spin the apple too fast or the carmel will fly off.

This is a good heating technique for Comrade Elliott and others who are confined in re-education camps (especially applicable to Comrade Elliott who is confined in the land of ketchup and pancake feeds).

Do not hold the apple in front of your TelePrompTer. If the hair dryer blows melted carmel onto the glass of the TelePrompTer you might without meaning to say a blood libel in Chinese or if your TelePrompTer is displaying these instructions, you might shove the apple into a bodily orifice requiring a visit to the Emergency Room.

Give a whole new meaning to the term "Candy Ass."

Leninka wrote: Give a whole new meaning to the term "Candy Ass."

I denounce you for causing me to spit People's Cola all over my computer screen.

After the Nobel Committee took some (entirely unjustified) over the prize to Barack Hussein Obamalini, they decided to focus on concrete achievements.

The concrete achievement of Dr. Stumpbucket is managing to denounce America more than three times, completely irrelevantly, in fewer than 400 words.

That's not what she was going to do, but what she really did.

Opiate of the People wrote:

Leninka wrote: Give a whole new meaning to the term "Candy Ass."

I denounce you for causing me to spit People's Cola all over my computer screen.

At least it was the People's Cola, and not the People's Vodka. The People's Vodka must never be wasted, as you know. It is the most revered Opiate of the People, Comrade Opiate of the People.

Yes, but People's Vodka over a computer screen at least acts as a cleaner, as opposed to People's Cola which will just gum up the whole works.

I still have some Varsol from the last time our Many Titted Empress was over at the Rancho. Anyone need some?

Perhaps the comrades in Norway have seen the light and have given the Nobel "Hope" Prize

I looked up Varsol on the internet, and apparently, it's become scarce. Yes, I could use some Varsol. It's good for many things, including starter fluid for my barbeque.

I'm surprised you didn't set the Many Titted Empress on fire when she was at the Rancho. She must have been very greasy indeed.

Instead of Varsol we can merely use naphtha.

Yes, our Many Titted Empress is very greasy, but more frightening is the grease that lies within her. A very fat man in San Antonio was cremated and he caught on fire, burning down the crematorium.

I worry about this. What if some progressive at the Rancho lights up a toke and manages to catch our MTE on fire? She's so greasy that, to quote Shakespeare about the kitchen wench Nell, "She would burn until a week before Doomsday."

I would hate for our Secretary of State to be on her airplane, a burning greasefire, going over to Russia. It would be like that scene in <i>Manhunter</i> when the tabloid reporter is put in a wheelchair and set on fire and pushed into a parking garage by the tooth fairy.

Colonel 7.62,

Vodka does come in handy for many things. No need for swine flu shots. Even a shot a day will keep anything away. Between that and garlic, it's no wonder the Russians have never been invaded.

Comrade Theocritus,

Opiate of the People is now not the only one doing any denouncing.

I DENOUNCE COMRADE THEOCRITUS for making me laugh near my bedtime. Now, it will keep me up an extra half hour.

What? Me? You just try living with Bruno. You'll be immune to absurdity. I hadn't snorted in years until I saw Nansky on television. Even Bruno started laughing.