There may be some disappointed people this Thanksgiving.

Nestle has announced that there may not be enough of its Libby's pumpkin pie products (a.k.a. pumpkin pie filling) to make it through the holidays. They say that heavy rain hurt their pumpkin harvest and that they will not package any more pumpkins this year.

Nestle is responsible for nearly all the canned pumpkin in the United States.

I really really hope my granny bought her Thanksgiving supplies early this year. I'm going to be one disappointed girl if there's no pumpkin pie on the dessert table...especially since it'll be my birthday as well.

Let's face it. We live in a world full of stereotypes - Southern people are hicks; northerners are rude; blondes are dumb; cops eat donuts. And they don't stop there.

As a redhead I've lived my life in a whirl of stereotypes - our tempers are hot; our sex drive is high; and did I mention we don't have souls? So I decided to put my journalistic skills to use and look into the myths/religious beliefs/weird customs behind the stereotypes that so desperately wish to define me.


Works of literature have done their fair share of fostering the stereotypes surrounding red hair.

Let's start with the most famous of redheaded stereotypes: the fiery nature of our temperament.

It is said of the redheaded heroine of Anne of Green Gables, Anne Shirley, that "her temper matches her hair."

Catcher in the Rye also pays homage to red hair when Holden Caulfield remarks, "People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily..." But he goes on to disprove the stereotype by saying his late brother, Allie, had very red hair but never got angry.

Literature has also lent its helpful efforts to the belief that redheads are "highly sexed." For example, author Johnathan Swift puts a satirical spin on this particular convention in the fourth part of his book Gulliver's Travels, "A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms." He writes: "It is observed that the red-haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength and activity."

Katherine Brush's novel Red-Headed Woman embraces both of the above-mentioned stereotypes in the portrayal of its protagonist - a sexually aggressive home-wrecker who frequently throws violent temper tantrums.

And as a possible contributor to the original myths of temperament, the character of Achilles in Homer's The Illiad is described as having red hair.


Red hair has often been the subject of artists. This painting is called "Accolade". It was painted by Edmund Blair Leighton in 1901. It pictures a red-haired Lady Guiniviere knighting a young fighter, perhaps Lancelot.

This famous painting is "The Birth of Venus" by early Rennaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the mythological goddess as a redhead.

Red hair can also be found in religious and mythological traditions. Red is the preferred dyeing color in Islam, and it is reported that the prophet Muhammad used henna to dye his hair red.

Esau, the twin brother of Jacob from 1 Samuel, is said to have been completely covered in red hair. Mary Magdalene is depicted as having flowing red hair in early artistic renderings (there is no mention of hair color in the Bible).

Thor of Norse mythology is portrayed as having red hair, and ancient Egyptians associated both red-haired people and red-colored animals with the god Set and considered them to be favored by the powerful and temperamental deity.

The popularity of red hair throughout history is touch and go. Queen Elizabeth I of England was a redhead, so during the Elizabethan Era red hair was viewed in a more favorable light.

In the Middle Ages, red hair and green eyes were thought to be the sign of a witch, werewolf or vampire. Montague Summers translated Malleus Maleficarum: "Those whose hair is red, of a peculiar shade, are unmistakably vampires."

Further translation reveals: "It is significant that in ancient Egypt, as Manetho tells us, human sacrifices were offered at the grave of Osiris, and the victims were red-haired men who were burned, their ashes being scattered far and wide by winnowing-fans. It is held by some authorities that this was done to fertilize the fields and produce a bounteous harvest, red-hair symbolizing the golden wealth of the corn. But these men were called Typhonians, and were representatives not of Osiris but of his evil rival Typhon, whose hair was red."

On a personal level I find this all fascinating, although I wish I had been able to find more information on the belief that redheads are soulless (other than references to that particular SouthPark episode). I don't much believe in stereotypes. I find them to be mostly generalizations that cannot be used to describe a particular group of people as a whole. Even if 99 of 100 people fits every known stereotype for their particular group, there is one person who proves them wrong, therefore rendering those stereotypes as just that: stereotypes.

Who in their right mind would genuinely want to, for lack of a better phrase, "hit that"? I mean, c'mon. It's David freaking Letterman.

*shudder*

But I guess when you put a $2 million price tag on the deed, he starts to look a whole lot better.

Technically the $2 million dollars wasn't for the sex. It was actually for a third party to keep quiet about ol' Dave's sexual affairs with his staffers, most of whom were interns if I'm not mistaken. But Mr. Letterman didn't exactly play by their rules.

Dave is suing CBS producer Robert "Joe" Halderman for extortion. Good for you, Dave. Admit your misdoings and stand up for your rights. Halderman, on the other hand, is backpedaling fast. Now he claims that he wasn't blackmailing the late night host but was actually proposing a screenplay. What an interesting show that would make: The Letterman Affairs.

I said good-bye to my appendix two weeks ago yesterday. It was a simple enough procedure. They inserted a camera into my belly button (interesting scar it's becoming) and then made two incisions in my lower abdomen - one on my right hip and one right above my pelvic area.

Oh, wait. I skipped a part. The most interesting part, minus the belly-button camera, of the whole operation. They deflated my kidneys and bladder and then pumped me full of air, like a balloon. That was so my appendix would float to the top of everything else.

They did the whole thing laproscopically, so instead of having one really big scar I'm developing three smaller scars. They didn't even use stitches or staples to close the incisions up. They just put these white strips that look like regular surgical tape, but must be more advanced, over them. The one on my hip came off a few days ago. I can't say as I'm excited about the unhidable scar I'm going to have there.

Anyway, my follow-up appointment is this afternoon. I'm kind of nervous. I don't like being poked on, and I foresee a lot of that happening. I'm also pretty sure the doctor is going to have something to say about my going back to work so soon, but if he does I have a response ready: I had to make the money to pay for this visit!

This is my horoscope for Monday:

I despise slow news days, and not just because I produce a two-hour show on a daily basis (excluding weekends, of course). They say "no news is good news," but in my humble opinion no news means old news which translates into boring.

And let me tell you, this morning was sloooow. As a rule, I pull all of the new news from the 10 p.m. show and anything of importance regardless of how many times it ran the day before. This morning, there was nothing new in last night's 10:00. I repeat, nothing. So I was forced to peruse the 6:00...and the 5:00, which is something we don't like to do EVER. But, lucky me, all of the important stories ran only once yesterday...a couple in the 5:00...a few more in the 6:00...and a measley one in the 10:00.

Joy of joys I needed seven more minutes worth of stories. These are the mornings my job gets...interesting. I came across a real estate scam, called a ponzi (I really should look into that name); a few trial conclusions; and nothing else worth mentioning.

I am rather intrigued by my kicker though. A Brazilian bricklayer who was thought to be dead showed up as his own funeral, much to the surprise of the family members that identified the body they were burying as him. Makes you wonder how close they were...

You know, in the face of all the horrible things happening out there, even as I'm typing this, sometimes something extraordinary happens to remind us not all things are all bad.

This past Saturday, 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick of Chipley, Florida, was reported missing from her parents' home. Following that report, a large-scale search was launched in Washington County.

I work at a television station. I actually put together the morning show (I'm the producer). Now we've been covering this story since it broke last weekend. Now I'm behind the scenes and regularly converse with three to five other production people. Now we've seen this story day in and day out, and as a producer I've seen/heard/read a lot of information that doesn't make it on air.

This was such a heart-wrenching story to follow. We were all sure the baby was dead, killed by its mother.

Well last night at about 9:30, Washington County Sheriff's Deputies found the baby...stuffed in a shoebox and shoved under a bed...but amazingly, alive. She had been put there at 8:00 yesterday morning, but she was unharmed and blessedly alive.

Life is full of little wonders.

In general, I'm not a big fan of technology. I think we've, for lack of a better explanation, made our lives overly complicated by trying to make things simpler and better.

Computers annoy me to no end - they never seem to cooperate and prove to be especially fickle in those moments when you desperately need them to work. And then there's the internet, or rather internet service providers (commonly known as ISP's). First there was dial-up and all of the problems that went along with it. Now there's DSL and wireless, which are supposed to be amazing in terms of their service. Bologna. Just last night my DSL just stopped working. For no reason. Everything was set up correctly, all the right lights were blinking, and my computer was shown to be connected, but it was all lies! There was no internet, and consequently I currently hate my ISP. With that being said, however, I obviously could not survive without my computer or the internet.

Which brings me to cellular devices. I don't consider the new cell phones to be phones at all. They've got way too much other stuff on them for them to be simply a phone. Now we've got the iPhone with its thousands of applications (all designed to make life simpler, of course) and the Blackberry with all its different versions, also with thousands of applications, and we can't forget Google's version of the smart phone. All come with text messaging capabilities, cameras to take pictures and record videos, and of course limited internet access. They're all designed to keep you in touch with everyone you could possibly know (and even some people you don't) at all times through all possible means.

But not all service providers were created equal. In the grand scheme of things, there are really two major contenders for the title of "Best Cell Phone Service Provider" - AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Both offer nationwide (their versions of it anyway) coverage as well as 3-G coverage. Personally, I prefer Verizon over AT&T, but that's mainly because my neck of the woods (a.k.a. the middle of nowhere) doesn't fall under AT&T's coverage. With that said though, I prefer AT&T's "More Bars" commercials over Verizon's "Can You Hear Me Now?" ads.

Which brings me to what started my technology-hating kick today - a commercial. More specifically, a lawsuit over a commercial. That commercial is Verizon's new "There's A Map For That" ad, which makes fun of Apple's "There's an App for That" spot. AT&T is suing Verizon...not because the commercial is poking fun at the iPhone, which they provide the service for...but because of the maps used in the commercial.

In the commercial, Verizon displays two maps: one showing its national 3-G coverage and another showing AT&T's national 3-G coverage with blank spaces to show the areas not included. The Verizon map is (obviously) more colored-in than the AT&T map...which is what all the hullaballoo is about. AT&T says the map used to show their 3-G coverage is misleading because they offer regular phone service in the blank areas. Apparently their customers are getting confused. I guess their customers aren't capable of understanding that the commercial is about 3-G coverage alone.

So does that mean Verizon is the more intelligent choice? Well, that depends on your phone preference. I, for one, don't look at 3-G coverage area to determine which service provider best fits my needs because when it comes down to it, a cell phone's most important feature is just that...the phone!

The Axe lawsuit I heard and blogged about yesterday intrigued me, much like all the other stupid lawsuits in the world intrigue me. I wanted to know the details so once I finished getting my show ready for this morning (it will air in about 30 minutes), I did a little journalistic research...and I didn't like what I found.

A 26-year-old man in New Delhi, India, reportedly was going to file a lawsuit against the Axe parent company, Unilever, for false advertisement. He claims the advertisements lied to him, making him believe if he used Axe products girls would be attracted to him. However, in the seven years he used the products he says "no girl ever came to me."

A spokesperson for Axe released a statement confirming the story is a hoax, but also said they found it "pretty funny" and "in line with our brand tone - playful, with a wink and a nudge."

Looks like my McDonald's-hot-coffee-lawsuit look-alike is dead before it even got started.

I have returned from an unwanted week-long vacation. Last week I had an emergency appendectomy, but don't worry. The pesky little booger came out just fine. I don't even have stitches. I will, however, have three small scars: one in my belly button (where they put the camera in), one on my hip and one right above my pelvis. I was in pain for awhile and it took a few days for the swelling to go down, but for the most part I'm recuperated. I still get tired really easily though, and the stairs I have to walk up at work every day/night are definitely not my friend.

I missed work while I was alternately sleeping and...well, sleeping at home last week. I'm not really sure what I missed news-wise. Two days were spent in the hospital, and during the other three I must confess the television didn't have as much allure as my bed.

This week was almost like starting over because of all the new stuff we're doing. It's Peanut Festival week so we've got promos and ticket giveaways (which are a blast, let me tell you). Plus we've added in a Rachael Ray "Tip of the Day" to every consumer segment. Today's was really lame by the way. Now we only have one "normal" day during the week, a.k.a. a show free of segments...at least until we start running different series.

The most interesting piece of news I heard yesterday (courtesy of 99.7 WOOF FM) was about a ridiculous lawsuit. Apparently a man, I don't know his name, is suing the makers of Axe deoderants and body sprays because...wait for it...in the seven years he has been using their products he hasn't gotten a girlfriend. He says that their advertisements, featuring scantily clad women throwing themselves at guys wearing Axe, are false advertising and have caused him psychological damage. The lawyers in this case are even going so far as to send his half-empty bottles of deoderants and cans of body spray off to laboratories to be chemically tested. The whole thing reminds me of the McDonald's lawsuit over hot coffee.