Booger

This week, I am working at the Burbank satellite location of the movie studio I work for as a space filler. The usual receptionist is making her acting dreams come true and I am here to sit in her seat and answer her phone, all three times it rings per day. Bore. Boring. Bored. But yesterday, with just an hour left to go, the most interesting person I have ever talked to EVER, in the history of Suz called my desk. She called claiming one of the executives at my work was interested in making a movie about her life. Thinking this was just one of the million billion crazies who call the studio everyday, I asked her who I could transfer her to and she said a legitimate person's name (thus making her seem a tiny bit more legit herself). But before I transferred her, she wanted to tell me her story first. It took her close to 45 minutes to tell me everything, and with some simultaneous Google researching, I was able to piece together the craziest hot mess I have ever heard. the following is proof that fact is way stranger than fiction:

Her name was Bernann and she had made world headlines in August 2008 as the first person ever to have her deceased pet cloned commercially.

Booger was a pit bull-mutt that Bernann found on the road one day. She did not want to take him to the pound because, as she says, nobody wants a dangerous dog. Booger was a good dog and a welcome distraction from her normal life, if one could call it that. At that time in Bernann's life, she was constantly being hounded and followed by the Paparazzi for some much alluded to, but never divuldged, past sexual indiscretion (which I will get into in a bit). Poor Bernann had to get a larger, meaner dog, a Bull Mastiff, to scare away the mean old Paparazzi. One day, after the Bull Mastiff had been playing too close to a bee hive and had been stung multiple times, so Bernann carefully applied anti-bee sting ointment to the mastiff. The mastiff had a slight allergy to the medication and responded by shredding open both of Bernann's legs from ankle to thigh, tearing off her left arm at the elbow and ripping open her torso and removing her stomach and large intestine from her body. Needless to say, Bernann was not too happy about this. She screamed for Booger to do something and within minutes, a neighbor came and removed the hungry mastiff and Booger became her saviour.

After the attack, Bernann fell in to a deep depression and the only one who could help her was Booger the pit bull mutt. He did everything for her from changing the channel on the TV, stopping suicide attempts, singing to her and even did her laundry (again, this is her part of the story). She regained her strength and soon after, Booger got cancer. He died soon after that and the only reason Bernann did not end her life was because God spoke to her and said "Booger is a butterfly." And of course, this was God telling her to clone Booger. After a failed attempt at getting her dog cloned in Utah, Bernann found hope in the Koreans. Some scientists in Seoul Korea were starting a business where for the low price of $75,000, you could have your beloved pet cloned and luckily for Bernann, in exchange for a agreeing to a publicity campaign, the Koreans agreed to clone Booger for only $50,000. Luckily again, Bernann had had the forethought to save Booger's ear, just in case an opportunity like this arose. When the Koreans came to get the precious ear, they came in style. They arrived in a black limo with a SWAT team and their own personal security service and swept her away to LAX where she was met with a private jet and hordes of adoring fans and members of the evil Paparazzi. As she watched the Koreans take the ear aboard the jet, she saw that the jet and the Koreans themselves start to glow. They glowed (glew?) so brightly that everyone was blinded and god spoke to the people of LAX. Surprisingly, or not surprising at all if you live in Hollywood, God sounded exactly like Morgan Freeman. He told the masses that "I have taken Booger away from you, but I shall soon return him to you, with a little something extra."

Three months passed and one day the Koreans called Bernann at home. They had a surprise for her and soon after that, the world was blessed with five, count 'em, five baby Boogers. The world fell in love with the Booger clones and a media frenzy surrounded the joyful Bernann and her quint of bouncing baby Boogers.

According to Bernann, that is the end of the story. And I have been promised a ride in the limo and the chance to hold Booger Number 4 at the premiere of this movie. The story above, and that story alone, is what she would like to make a movie of. But, oh, dear reader, there is so much more. How does one get to the point where one makes the decision to clone your dog for $50,000? Easy. You must follow a strict regimen of living life completely outside the realm of rationality and never NEVER doing anything the easy way.

Bernann, born Joyce McKinney, was born in a small town in North Carolina. She moved around quite a bit and eventually wound up in Wyoming where she was crowned Miss Wyoming and represented her state in the Miss America pageant. Soon after, she enrolled in Bringham Young where she fell in love with a devout Mormon missionary named Kirk Anderson. They had an brief sexual affair in 1977 and an ashamed Anderson was advised to move far away and sever all ties with McKinney. He moved to England and was leading a pious life when one day a knock came on the door. McKinney had followed Anderson to England and had brought along a male friend. The friend tried to knock Anderson out with chloroform, and when that didn't work, he forced Anderson at gun point into a car. The three drove 200 miles away to a remote cottage that McKinney and the friend had rented. Anderson was handcuffed to the bed and for the next three days, McKinney begged Anderson to marry her. She raped him at least three times and when Anderson finally agreed to marry her, she loosened the handcuffs and Anderson was able to flee. He found a police station and McKinney was arrested soon there after. After a joke of a trial, in which the judge and lawyers basically ridiculed and scoffed at Anderson's testimony (saying "Methinks the Mormon doth protest too much..."), McKinney was locked away for only three months (much less than a man would get for kidnapping and raping a woman, by the way). She then ran way to Canada where she pretended to be a deaf-mute mime for about a year. Alas, the ever persistent press corps eventually found her and she escaped again. This time she disguised herself as a nun and took up residence in a hotel in Atlanta, GA. And then she stopped pretending to be a nun and started posing topless for various magazines. And THEN in 1984, the Salt Lake City police found her in the parking lot of Kirk Anderson's workplace with rope and handcuffs in the car. And then she got sick and no one heard anything about her until now... (If you want to read the details, click here)

And THAT is who pays $50,000 for the cloning of a dog. That is how one gets from point A to point B. And that is who I am now best friends with. A convicted kidnapper/rapist amputee former Miss Wyoming who sometimes pretends to be a deaf mime or a nun and is in leauge with the Korean Cloners. That is the type of person who calls Suz.

Oh, and are you wondering what happened to Boogers 1,2,3,4, and 5? Bernann told me she was unable to pay the $50,000 (wha??? shocked!) to the Koreans and all of the history making clones are sitting in a shelter in Palm Beach, CA waiting to be paid for. What a waste of a perfectly good litter of dog clones.