G'Day, Mates!
Well, for the past four days now, the world's most influential woman (not counting Miley Cyrus and her pet bong “Hufflepuff,” Mother Nature, or the female members of the British Royal Family who haven't been dragged out of their cars and set aflame in the streets by Uni students yet), Oprah Winfrey, has been right here in my own country of Australia. This is wonderful for the Australian Tourism Council, but sends something of a mixed message to Australia's famously racis…er… selective… immigration department, which finds itself in the topsy-turvy situation of having to bring a black woman INTO the country for a change.
"Oprah Headed Down Under" is not a phrase I am comfortable reading in our newspapers ever again:
I personally found it a bit odd that the second Oprah stepped off the plane, Australia started getting freaky meteorological events. Oprah's here five minutes, and suddenly half of New South Wales is underwater due to massive flooding, the half of the Wheat Belt not on fire due to lightning storms is being decimated by the largest swarm of Plague Locusts the country's ever seen (Andrei Trostel, hold onto your eyeball!), a freaky dust storm turned Sydney's sky red for several hours, and Justin Bieber announced a concert tour of Perth in April. Coincidence? I. Think. Not. Clearly the Tea Party wingnuts who claimed that Barack Obama was the Anti-Christ were in the right general ballpark, they just had the wrong Seat of Power earmarked and needed to add a little Oestrogen.
…Thirty seconds later, she swallowed the Koala Joey quicker than a bucket of buttered M&Ms:
Of course, despite the fact that Oprah's in the country, she's NOT coming to Western Australia. Most West Australians were a bit insulted by this (we have plenty of natural and architectural wonders for her to fawn over insipidly and command her legion of sweatpant-armoured Midwest Ohio hausfraus to descend upon immediately): we have the Bungle-Bungle ranges, the feeding of wild dolphins at Shark Bay, Kakadu National Park, plenty of discrete beats for Steadman, and let's not forget that 80% of West Australia's flora and fauna is unique to this state. We even have antivenom for most of them now.
Maybe she found out that Justin Bieber's coming and didn't want to take the chances. I mean, the two of them in the same country at the same time? The Angel of Death would pretty much HAVE to open the Seventh Seal, right?!