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How to make Shrump Roast
Here's a great satire on complicated recipe books that are just filled with multitudes of steps and assumptions that bewilder non-initiates.
To make shrump roast, take one banjo full of humper-flump leaves and teach them to tango. Then catch several shrump and spank them to see if they are ripe. If they are, throw them back and get some unripe ones. After that tie the shrump and the humper-flump leaves into a ball made of the hide of a were-gerbil, hang it from a pole, and use it to play tether ball with a cross dressing male wolf.
If you followed the directions perfectly you should have a large ball of what looks like moldy, purple and white striped McD's triple whopper with sneeze. Prod this foul-smelling thing into an electric wood burning oven with the door on top. Sprinkle with flea powder and cook till it re-enacts Hamlet. If it's at the duel scene, hit with a fly swatter and it should turn into a large shrump roast.
This recipe was written by a 12-year-old Aspergian named Gabriel, author John Robison tells us. It is remarkable not just because it is so funny, but the precocious child seems to have invented a whole new genre in just two paragraphs! I would love reading a whole book of recipes like this. Just another example of how giftedness frequently accompanies asperger's. Lewis Carroll (whose real name was the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) would have been delighted by this (see Jabberwocky, elsewhere on this blog). "Shrump Roast" is a great satire on complicated recipe books that are just filled with multitudes of steps and assumptions that bewilder non-initiates.
Gabriel's work first appeared in the Jan. 23, 2008 entry of John Robison's delightful blog Look Me In The Eye. Mr. Robison, who also has Asperger's, wrote the New York Times best-selling book with the same title and invented the word "aspergian" which, in turn, inspired the blog you are reading now.
My apologies to Robison for lifting 2 full paragraphs from his blog. Fair use? Robison himself is quite a humorous writer who comes from a family of writers. If you ever enjoyed the freshness of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s prose you will love Robison's blog.
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