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.

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.

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.