Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Satire: Oprah Launches Own Reality

The Onion reports on Oprah's new dimension of time and space.

Oprah Launches Own Reality

Oprah's New Reality

Flanked by three Gayles, Oprah harnesses the power of an unstable isotope on the set of her new universe.

April 16, 2008 | Issue 44•16

CHICAGO—Calling it the next logical step in her celebrated career, and a groundbreaking achievement in applied quantum field theory, media giant Oprah Winfrey unveiled her latest project Monday: a completely separate realm of existence, known as >OpraH, which she will control on the subatomic level.

"Now, Oprah's always on!" Winfrey said through an interspatial image of herself broadcast between her world and ours. "I've created a place where anyone can come to share and laugh and feel totally free from the conventional laws of the physical universe."

"I invite you all to be guests in my new reality," she added.

This latest addition to Winfrey's empire—which already includes her flagship talk show, a reality TV program, an influential book club, O magazine, the thoughts and emotions of millions of viewers, and two television networks—is Oprah's first foray into large-scale nucleosynthesis. Developed over the past three years by the theoretical physics wing of her company, Harpo Productions, >OpraH was reportedly created by tearing a small hole in the fabric of known reality. The talk-show host then went about restructuring an infinite number of never-before-seen particles to produce a separate dimension, which is currently oscillating around Chicago.

According to her aides, Winfrey was personally involved in the most minute details of planning, from the type of coffee served in the green room of her new studio facility to the genetic makeup of every organism she deemed worthy of receiving life.

"Oprah has always been the queen of her time slot, and now she is the queen of Time," said publicist Jackie Guerwith, who noted that Tuesday will be the first day of "Year O" in Winfrey's reality. "All events, sequences, and measurements of motion will now take place between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern."

Enlarge Image Oprah Chart

A scientific breakdown of the steps involved in constructing the new reality.

Guerwith would not disclose how much Winfrey spent to construct >OpraH, but said that the Emmy Award winner had patented several particles, known as Winfrinos and Oprons, and was looking forward to making a difference in people's lives on a deep, molecular level.

"Oprah's working with Dr. [Mehmet] Oz right now to make some fun and exciting changes to the double-helix structure of common DNA," Guerwith said. "And because Oprah is so giving, you can also expect a few surprises in cellular reproduction, a new and improved visible light spectrum, and maybe even a visit from Gayle!"

Added Guerwith, "Whether it's rising from poverty to become the richest woman in America, or punching a wormhole through the multidimensional fabric of space-time in order to rule over her own universe, Oprah has proved once again that no obstacle is too big.

While she claimed that many standard principles such as Hoyle's steady state theory and relativistic time dilation would function the same way in >OpraH as they do on Earth, Winfrey said the new reality will afford her the opportunity to accomplish some things that were "just not possible" in the three-dimensional world of mortal humans. Certain concepts reportedly do not exist in >OpraH, including prejudice, greed, unsuccessful adaptations of Toni Morrison novels, the second law of thermodynamics, and human suffering.

To begin populating her new Oprahverse, Winfrey reportedly instructed her staff biologists to obtain semen samples from some of her favorite celebrity guests—most notably actors John Travolta and Denzel Washington—and use them to fertilize eggs harvested from Julia Roberts. Winfrey also maintained that, in >OpraH, all women will be strong and confident while retaining their femininity, pollution will not exist, and no one will die of disease without first making an appearance on her show.

"This is all for you," Winfrey told a live studio audience while she used her hands to split a uranium 235 atom following an interview with actor Sidney Poitier, her new biological father. "I'm going to show you how to live your life better, easier, and more happily. I'm going to show you the best books and the best foods and the best fashions. I'm going to show you everything. Everything."

"They say the universe is always expanding and contracting," added a smiling Winfrey. "But I'm going to make Pilates mandatory in >OpraH, because there ain't going to be any more expanding, if you know what I mean."

The crowd then burst into uncontrollable laughter for three minutes until a concentrated beam of light emanated from Winfrey's mouth and all fell silent.

Despite the mostly positive feedback, a number of scientists have warned that because >OpraH is a solid-state representation of unstable probability fields, it could become dislodged from its self-generated foundation and move across dimensions into our own.

"If that were to happen, all known matter in the universe would implode instantaneously," said Mark Chan, a professor of quantum mechanics at Caltech. "But, God, I'm such a huge fan. Who doesn't love Oprah?"

Though Chan's theory remains contested, every physicist interviewed for this article agreed that, even in >OpraH, the odds of Stedman ever proposing remain too small to calculate.



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