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“Who does Robert Olen Butler think he is?”

I was trying to explain to a young man why you always, always carry a writing notebook and a pen, so I showed him this genuine, overhead-in-the-hallways, can’t-make-this-stuff-up line I had jotted down minutes earlier, and no,  I’m not telling you who said it — not here on this blog, anyway.

But every time I repeat that line  (wickedly including the source) there is much covered-mouth tittering. Not at ROB, of course, who thinks he is a Pulitzer-winning author with a gorgeous reading voice, and he would be right, and who generously gave of his time at this conference, as did Philip Gerard, Pat MacEnulty, and others. And of course, the point is made: you can’t be a writer if you aren’t ready to write good stuff down the moment you hear it.

This was my first year attending the Tallahassee Writers’ Association conference. It was much bigger and better than a conference that size would appear to be, and I really can do little else than blurt out some of my cryptic notes and say, if you are a writer in this region, be at this conference next year!

I also met with an agent, and one thing I said is why can’t I put together a collection of published/publishable writing and publish it to Kindle? Well, she asked, then why do you need me? My response was for the expertise on the things I don’t know how to do.  She had never had that question before. But why not?

Stuff Heard, and Written Down

Speaking of Mr. Who-Does-He-Think-He-Is, Robert Olen Butler told us in his keynote, “Great writing comes from the place where you dream.” The only craft you legitimately earn is the technique you have forgotten. A short-short story has as its center a character who yearns.

Butler also said the Kindle is the future of publishing. He has a Kindle II, and read from it.

Philip Gerard had many good things to share. The persistence of vision is a nearly-perfect metaphor for how scenes work. A character goes into action to satisfy a yearning or escape a fear. If we don’t care about the characters, we don’t care about the story.

“Action is character; we watch what people do and thereby we know them.” (He says this is a second-hand quote.) Plot is often derided, but he holds it dear. (I knew these notes would appear nonsensical out of context.) Setting: he thinks of this as if he were staging a show. Setting is a stage of action. Also consider the apparent subject and the deeper subject.

“Choose language carefully,” Gerard said, noting that this is something “you can rarely do in the first draft.” Be sure you “earn the emotion.” As for creative nonfiction, it has to pass the “eulogy test” (alas, I no longer recall what that is!).

On building a book, Gerard first quoted F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Every person should have a bottle of champagne chilled at all times.” The minute you give a book to someone else, you’re no longer alone. The writer’s work ethic involves a “peasant mentality” — the willingness to work a 12-hour day, all the way through.

In the first stage,  you work on the pre-vision.

What is the aboutness of the work? It can boil down to something very simple; it’s somebody in motion toward a goal.

Why do you want to write this book? Nobody can tell you what book to write. What’s in it for you?

A good ending has rectitude.

Pat MacEnulty (Sweet Fire, among other books), spoke about voice. “Once I find the voice, then the book writes itself.” “Most writers are actors,” assuming roles. As writers, we are allowed to hear voices in our heads. “Don’t censor the voices.”

Try having your characters say one thing and think another.

There are many approaches, but try layering: build a skeleton of your writing. She likes beginning with dialog and then adding action and description. For description, be sure to note the quality of light.

What is it like to be inside that character’s body?

Every scene does not need conflict and resolution, but a scene is more engaging if there’s tension in it. Let the reader experience the events.

Try writing scenes as if they were in a play (just as an exercise).

More Gerard (workshop, The Retrospective Narrator): If I’m a retrospective narrator, ask, how retrospective am I? Where am I in reference to this story?

A story is told by somebody, to an audience, at some time, for a reason.

Gerard also mentioned the Kindle. (The Kindle would come up at least four times at the conference.)

Have a business plan for your writing career.

Yet more Robert Olen Butler: Write what is authentic. Write every day. Begin close to your demographic. Go straight from sleep to writing. Use muscle memory. Listen to your writing (thrum thrum thrum… TWANG).

It’s always a struggle, but you learn how to struggle.

Books and other Writing Recommended, Seen, Desired

Pat MacEnulty, Sweet Fire

Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain [since borrowed and read -- quite fabu]

Robert Olen Butler, Tabloid Dreams

Philip Gerard, Secret Soldiers

River Teeth – see Gerard’s essay, “Thirteenth Hour”

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“Turns out there’s a lot of interlinks in our financial system” — George Bush on CNN. Is this man president? Of the United States? Of America? Now the Old Fart will take office, keel over… and we’ll have Little Miss “I can see RUSSIA from my HOUSE!” near the Red Phone. Be Afraid! Register and VOTE!

Over on greenhybrid.com I posted this story of how Action Auto, Proctor Honda, and greenhybrid.com all done me good, in an everything-is-miscellaneous kinda way.

Tayari Jones had reached out for advice about getting back into her writing groove. I admitted I had fallen away from getting up early, and declared defeat. But since writing that, I’ve had two very successful 5 a.m. personal-writing sessions… to paraphrase a great bard, I’ve been jammin’ at the break of day.  Thank you, Tayari!

Seventeen WorldCat libraries now own The Best Creative Nonfiction Volume 2! Oooh, I can see Charlotte-Mecklenburg from my house! I sent out two postcards with Librarian Haiku — one was solicited, one wasn’t. Geeze, I can’t even GIVE away my haiku. Really, send your snail-mail to kgs at freerangelibrarian dot com and prepare to be astounded!

The local writing workshop I manage celebrates its first-year anniversary in October. Go us!

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Tallahassee Farmer’s Market

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian
The market up at Timberlane doesn’t look like much, if you’re accustomed to “farmer’s markets” with masseurs and string quartets — folding tables and veggies, no oompah bands — but at least a handful of farmers are there year-round.

It takes some dedication to go to the farmer’s market in the blustery months, when you’re lucky to score garlic greens and maybe some resilient spinach, but as the photo shows, we’re getting into the easy season, when it’s a joy to fill shopping bags with sun-drenched ‘maters, fancy lettuces, eggplant, peppers, green beans, Manatee Farm’s wonderful oyster mushrooms, and wickedly sweet strawberries.

I’m not all about the veggies, however, and two weekends running I’ve scored fabulous local fish. Last weekend it was clams from ABC Clam Company in Sopchoppy. I rested the clams in cold water for four hours so the clams would spit out whatever it was they had brought from the sea, then steamed them with a little white wine and butter and whisked them to the table with crusty brown bread.

I also bought some tupelo honey from the fisherman, and asked him if he had produced it. “No, I used to, but it’s too hard,” he replied. “Now I let the bees make it.” It was Easter weekend and I was splurging, so I made tupelo ice cream–just vanilla custard ice cream with tupelo honey instead of sugar. It was satin-smooth, and tasted of sunlight and spring afternoons.

At the urging of a work colleague this Sunday I went to Mike’s, an Asian food and fish store. In the past I have been underwhelmed — it seemed weary, and smelled of old fish — but something has indeed happened at Mike’s: it was bright and tidy, with only a faint, clean aquatic fragrance to tip me off that the fish counter was still there in the back of the store.

A knowledgeable young fishmonger pointed Yessum toward the grouper cheeks. (”Yessum” is who I am in many Southern establishments, as in, “Yessum, those grouper cheeks are right fresh.”) Grouper is a moderately-flavored local fish, and its cheeks are sweet delectables that bake up moist and firm; at $6.99 a pound, grouper cheeks are an insanely good deal.

Mr. Fish apologized for the shortage of other fish — apparently there was a run in the store the previous day, and their fish is the real McCoy, pulled in from our Gulf waters — but there was no need; I was a happy cook. I baked the grouper in a drizzle of olive oil, sea salt, and fresh-ground pepper, and served it over a mound of eggplant sauteed with Vidalia greens, garlic, peppers, and oyster mushrooms, accompanied with whole-wheat couscous perked up with organic parsley for color and bite.

I still eat meat now and then, but the more I learn about factory farming, the less interested I am in commodity meat — and the more I paddle toward local, sustainably-caught fish. With Southern Seafood anchoring the northern end of town and Mike’s for those of us in these parts, and rumor having it that New Leaf, when it finishes expansion, will have a fish counter, plus fine establishments such as the Shell Oyster Bar to keep us in mollusks, there’s no shortage of oceanic protein to keep us Dixievore pescetarians happy and well-fed.

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I’m not really driving a hybrid (not that I would object if Santa put a forest-green Prius in my stocking this year); I still have my 1993 Honda Civic, which gets a respectable mileage for its 4-mile commute to my office. So the title of this post is a metaphor for how I’m approaching Lent this year.

Usually I stop doing something for Lent. (Quick synopsis of this season: According to the Scripture, Jesus went into the desert. The Devil sought to tempt Jesus with worldliness, but Jesus, thrice, resisted. He came out of the desert, got whacked, and three days later rose from the dead. Notice how there are no bunnies in this story.)

My own Lents of previous years have been fairly typical. For 40 days (less a few slip-ups), I deny myself that “thing” — fat, carbohydrates, refined sugar, whatever. Then I observe the Passion of Christ, celebrate His rising, and resume my regular habits.

But Jesus didn’t go into the wilderness to take off a few pounds. He was looking for other things, such as introspection, education, and — most crucially — transformation.

This Lent I’m not looking for a quick diet or for presto abnegation. My goal this Lent is to move farther down the food chain, and closer to our local growers. I want to connect with the miracle of the food cycle right here in the Big Bend region. I want to understand where my food comes from. I want to talk to the people who grow my food. I want to know that what nourishes me supports my neighbor.

I’m not on some “test” where I do or do not “cheat.” Some days are easier than others, and travel is always tough. But I’m trying to avoid refined flour and sugar, and I’m also trying to embrace local markets, local foods, local farms, regional, seasonal products, and in general become more aware of and sensitive to the consequences of how we produce food in America. I’m trying to avoid CAFO meat and dairy, but also to embrace meat, eggs, and cheese from happy animals. I’m asking why I need to buy fruit from Peru or California when I live in an area with its own fabulous produce, and I’m also trying to understand what food should be available at this time of year — not just what we force into availability. As some of my favorite food writers have discussed, I’m trying to be a better omnivore.

Some things are easier than others. The bowls of office candy were hugely tempting for several weeks. Now I look at them and see high-fructose corn syrup and preservatives — basically, government-subsidized garbage. I already fight the tubbiness common to aging office workers; the nervous office nibbling needed to stop anyway. The more I read about our broken food system, the more repelled I am by commodity meat and dairy; I see those poor animals packed shoulder-to-shoulder in feed lots, forced to eat unnatural foods, and I don’t want to be part of that misery. I go to the market and bring home white eggplant and Vidalia onion greens grown in local farms, and my mouth waters all day as I think about how I’m going to cook them.

In a season associated with denial, I’m looking for transformation from a baby lettuce leaf. From a ruddy, hand-hefty tomato. From a sweet, crisp oyster.

Recommended reading: Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation.

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I try not to think about this too often, but at times it’s depressing to contemplate that a capital city with two universities can be home to a “Gourmet Guide” — really, next to what you can find on Chowhound, the only local guide to dining in Tallahassee — with a rating system that makes absolutely no sense.

Last week’s review of Liam’s should have afforded me some comfort. It’s a relief to see coverage of a restaurant that is not a chain (why does Outback even need a review — do Blooming Onions change that much city to city?), did not last update its interior in the Eisenhower administration, and hasn’t forged new records for critical health inspection violations.

Stiff’s language was even, for once, restrained — which is, believe you-me, a Good Thing. I have written on Chowhound how painful Stiff’s writing can be when the Dem’s editors (clearly distracted by the far more important business of reporting ad infinitum on FSU’s football team) let Stiff stain their newsprint with far too many of his sappy puns, down-home yucks, and windy references to The Good Old Days of forty and fifty years ago (you remember those days, when Jim Crow reigned and women couldn’t get credit cards on their own recognizance).

I won’t even quibble that his review of the actual food at Liam’s is scant on description, as is true with most of his reviews. His background in the industrial-strength hospitality business is evident in his focus on the setting and service (not bad things to address) and his brief, sensory-limited comments that a dish is “nirvana” or that the duck is “rose-pink rare.” (With duck, the first question is always is it rubbery.)

Nor will I dink Stiff, who comments on Liam’s commitment to healthy food, for failing to observe that one current discussion in the foodie world focuses on the environmental tradeoffs to shipping organic goods long distances — as in, flying in organic duck from upstate New York. Liam’s does feature many local foods; the pea shoots that graced my (local, sustainably-caught, sweet as sugar, fresh as a splash of ocean foam) sea bass grew somewhere between here and Thomasville.

Furthermore, with respect to environmentalism, Tallahassee is so far behind on its developmental milestones — the topic is still a big yawn to many in this area, where the unapologetic guzzling of energy resources can border on the grotesque — that Liam’s may have to simply serve a high-demand food such as duck if it’s going to compete with other top-drawer restaurants. I have had duck at a number of local restaurants (Urbane’s so far was the best), and it’s only my gradual interest in ethical, environmentally responsible dining that even has me raise this question.

I will even forgive Stiff for attempting to go foodie on us in his wine discussion while not realizing that despite their small but nice wine list — a fairly new turn at Liam’s — they welcome “BYOB.” They have no corkage fee, and will store and open your wine for you.

But then — for no reason stated — Stiff gives Liam’s four and a half “hats.”

Four and a half effing hats.

Liam’s is a restaurant that is in a completely different stratosphere from most of the — I must say it — crap in this area. Liam’s is often referred to as “big-city-good,” as in, if it were suddenly transported to Manhattan, it could stand proud next to many a restaurant of its ilk. (The lone pho house in Tallahassee is only Tallahassee-good — respectable for this area, just not in a league with big-city pho houses.)

You speak of Liam’s in the same breath as Avenue Sea (in Apalachicola) and Urbane, Sage, and Cypress in Tallahassee (Kool Beanz, Clusters and Hops, and Fusion often enter this debate as well, as do some very good ethnic restaurants, rib shacks, and breakfast or oyster joints).

But based on that ludicrous Gourmet Guide — a guide based on the singularly incomprehensible food rating efforts of Stiff himself — Liam’s is half a hat above Outback and The Melting Pot — two chain restaurants!

But then again, the Tallahassee Democrat’s Gourmet Guide is top to bottom a ridiculous mess.

Sahara — with its hand-rolled dolmas, meat or vegetarian — has three hats– just like Macaroni Grill. Meanwhile, my beloved Shell Oyster Bar has three and a half hats — right up there with Stiff’s rating for The Olive Garden.

In the “light meals” category, Jenny’s Lunchbox — a cute and tasty breakfast and lunch joint — has only three hats, while Crisper’s, a forgettable chain, has three and a half.

On and on it goes, no rhyme or reason.

I have tried in this discussion to steer clear of drubbing truly local restaurants. In food reviewing, one visit should never torpedo a local business. My sense is that local reviewing can focus on what’s great and good, and leave the rest to inference or at least, where a place must get reviewed, to unavoidable conclusions backed with extensive evidence. But let’s just say that I’ve dined at enough places on the list — some of which serve what I think of as The Food You Eat When You Go To Hell– to say without any equivocation that the “Gourmet Guide” is neither gourmet nor a guide.

Read Chowhound, ask around, learn about the area. We don’t have enough great places to eat, but we do have some, and they deserve your business. Just steer clear of the Democrat’s restaurant advice, or as happened to me far too often when I was very new here, you’ll get Stiffed.

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I wasn’t in the mood for Thistle and Shamrock on my drive home from a Sunday afternoon writing siege at Panera’s (a little Celtic music goes an extremely long way for me), and I really wanted to finish listening to the latest On the Media show I had downloaded to my iPod, so I rummaged in the scary bottom floor of my purse for my Kensington digital iPod FM transmitter — but came up with a handful of parts.

Somehow the transmitter had separated. The tip, which constrains all the innards of the transmitter, screws off, which is a good thing if I ever need to change the fuse (I didn’t even know it had a fuse until the transmitter deconstructed), and a bad thing for someone with a purse so messy for all I know the WMD are in there.

I found four parts. The only problem is that there are actually five, and the missing part is a bespoke little spring that makes the doomaflatchy stay firm against the whatsis so the whole thing works.
So I wrote Kensington and asked them if they sold a spring or could provide one.

No, they said, they couldn’t. (This unit is being discontinued, Amazon advises.) But they could send me an entire replacement unit, assuming I could provide them with my address (easily acquired; I ran outside my house to make sure I remembered it correctly) and the serial number on the unit, which gave me a day’s pause as I rummaged through my office (strangely evocative of my purse) for the handy Brookstone magnifying glass a friend had given me two years ago. (I think the magnifying glass was a regifting thrice removed from friends who are pretending they aren’t growing old, and who will later complain that they can’t read the serial number on the back of their iPod/transmitter/Treo/computer, etc.)

Now, I’m sure Kensington doesn’t replace entire units for every customer query or problem. I’m guessing “you need an X fuse” is their most common response, and if I could fix this with a fuse, I would. I also suspect that tepid reaction to their new unit might make it good policy to send out freebies for customers with problems with the old ones.

But I already adored Kensington for the value this product had added to my life — and if you think that’s an overstatement, try driving from Tallahassee to Atlanta with only the radio as your companion (which is why it usually stays in my purse: so I have it when I rent cars).

For that matter, try driving to Publix from your home when the local public radio talk show is all a-chatter about poor picked-upon Mr. Vicks who ain’t done nuthin wrong. In exasperation against local radio programming I have used my iPod and my FM transmitter to create Radio Free Tallahassee, and I now donate directly to the public radio shows I regularly download. My iPod transmitter isn’t some miscellaneous bit of technology; it’s part of my local survival strategy (and I went through several other brands before finding one that worked).

So while I wait for the new transmitter, I shall hum to myself quite a bit — and the song shall be “If only we could all be like Kensington.” When my transmitter finally meets its maker, the chances are extremely good I’ll buy another Kensington. If the new unit is a dud, I’m going to be a lot more forgiving, and still willing to give Kensington a chance, and if I like it, I’ll coo all over Amazon. Overall, they’ve set the temperature of my warmth for their company far higher than it had been before I reached into my purse and came up with a handful of metal and plastic.

Meanwhile, in preparation for some Very Serious Work (research about research — the thought makes me dizzy), I ordered The Black Swan from the Leon County library. It arrived, but in the wrong format (CD instead of print). So I wrote the library, and guess what? I got the same service.

The library didn’t say “You ordered the wrong format!” There weren’t demands to come in to get this right or even call them (this was all by email). They immediately reassured me that the right format was on order — and guess what, they even told me when it might arrive. I know they have funky old catalog software that makes it difficult if not impossible to put this last bit of information into messages, but how wonderful that they took the time to share it with me so that I didn’t have to give up and buy the book from Amazon.

I’m always happy at that library — if they don’t have a book, they get it for me fast, and everyone is so friendly. I feel welcome there. But I felt welcome by this email exchange, as well.

The key here is understanding that it’s not the freebie or the close attention to an interlibrary loan. It’s not about the policy or the workflow. It’s about the focus on making — and keeping — happy, even passionate, customers.

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At first, when I couldn’t find a post I had made on Chowhound yesterday morning before I left for work, I chalked it up to my own sloppy surfing. I have been acutely focused on Friday’s talk, as many people from MPOW are coming, which I am finding very stressful to the point of frazzlement and hair-pulling (if I flub a talk 300 hundred miles from home, I can fly home and be done with it; but I see these folks every day).

But then I looked in the cache for Bloglines and found my own Chowhound post and the one that prompted it, in reference to this discussion of Urbane, a new restaurant in Tallahassee.

It’s not even the first Chowhound post of mine that has evaporated into the net-ether. Last week I linked to my review of the Shell Oyster Bar, and that vanished. I thought, well enough: they don’t want bloggers using Chowhound as a honeypot.

But what was wrong with the following posts? (Posting dates refer to Bloglines’ feeds, not to Chowhound’s timeline.) I thought we were having a smart exchange about the nature of expression with respect to food.

And how comfortable are we about living in a world where commercial enterprises calling the shots on intellectual freedom — with nary a word to the authors? Yes, I know they say they can do that — but is that the world we want to live in?

The other poster’s comment (sorry, I don’t remember who it was!), Tue, Feb 12 2008 4:35 PM:

“Coffee & Doughnuts” sounds lifted directly from The French Laundry Cookbook. “Coffee & Doughnuts” is one Thomas Keller’s signature dishes. It is one of my most revered and treasured cookbooks. IMHO it is one thing for a recreational chef to prepare something right from a cookbook, but for a “Chef” who is paid for his creativity, technique, and talent to plaguarize…I would expect more than that. I have followed previous threads on different sites and this topic of chefs plaguarizing has been thoroughly dissected. Bascially, is it right for a chef to put a dish on his menu, take credit for it, when it has been directly lifted from another chef. Take classic dishes for example; Nicoise Salad, Beef Bourgogne, Tarte Tatin, the list is endless. These dishes are constantly replicated, however a good chef will reinterpret. In this case the classic dish is actually a cup of joe with fresh doughnuts. Thomas Keller is world renowned for his whimsical approach to classic dishes. So is it fair for another “chef” to steal his dish, even though it was published in his cookbook (meant for the home cook)?

My response (Wed, Feb 13 2008 9:54 AM):

Well — this was not a cup of joe with doughnuts (which I would not have bothered with); it was a silky mocha semifreddo topped with cream — a fake frozen latte — served with doughnut holes, really very moist, hot quasi-beignets. So if the name is borrowed but the dish is reinterpreted, is that not acceptable? In the literary world, titles of books are not copyrighted; unless someone outright trademarks them in advance, they are not protected. I can’t present the text of Pride and Prejudice as my own, but I can certainly use that title and then whimsically write my own take on this classic. To me this is not “lifting” (let alone plagiarizing) but responding. Food is a conversation. Urbane’s chef replied to Keller, “This is how *I* see this dish.” That to me is not only legitimate but delightful. Riffing on other chef’s interpretations is a way of saying we are all participating in an ongoing discussion about cuisine. Urbane’s interpretation may well be conditioned by the idea that in Tallahassee, palates are far less jaded than in the Bay Area, and a local diner might be acutely disappointed by a dish that would seem cute or whimsical for the culinary Brahmins of the world. I appreciate your erudition here, by the way — I will probably never dine at the French Laundry, but it’s nice to find out that a local dish has more classic roots than I realized. I just hope we never find ourselves dining on “Lamb Shanks French Laundry — All Rights Reserved.”

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It's February 14, 2008, and the first thing on most people's minds is Valentine's Day. Wendi and I are exchanging gifts later, and Jo is already enjoying the gift I got her--her very own lightsaber. (Here she's posing very seriously, she tells me, like Luke.) We're already enacted a few scenes from Star Wars, and one, unintentionally, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

But it's not just Valentine's Day--it's the first day pitchers and catchers can report for spring training! Ah, the return of baseball season. Could this day get any better?

Oh, but it can! Today is also the day Samurai Shortstop is officially available in paperback!

Happy Samurai Spring Training Valentine's Day!

Over the weekend the Chunichi Dragons defeated the Nippon Ham Fighters to win the 2007 Japan Series (the Japanese equivalent to our World Series, only more appropriately named.) And that's the Fighters as sponsored by the Nippon Ham company, not the Ham Fighters of Nippon. The win by the Dragons ended a 53-year championship drought for the Dragons, the favorite sons of Nagoya, Japan.

Strangest of all, Dragons starting pitcher Daisuke Yamai was pitching a perfect game in the fifth and deciding game when his manager took him out of the game in favor of closer Hitoki Iwase! Proof positive that the Japanese do things differently than we do. Can you imagine if Casey Stengel had pulled Don Larsen from his perfect game in the 1956 World Series against Brooklyn!? Yankee fans would have burned Yankee Stadium to the ground.

Link to Asahi Shimbun article.

Chicago Cub fans like to point out that they haven't won a World Series since 1908. Yes, next year will be the one hundred year anniversary of the last time the Cubs could be called world champs.

Still, you have to love the sign shown tonight during the Indians/Yankees playoff game:

"The Indians are due since 1492."

And bonus points for it being Columbus Day today.

Your Sports Story of the Day:

The Washington Nationals baseball team is giving away bobblehead presidents. July 4th's bobblehead: George Washington.

This actually makes sense, because the Nationals don't have any players worth commemorating with a bobblehead. And the four presidents - Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt (Teddy) - are undoubtedly better hitters than half the Nationals line-up. (Washington was particularly good with the cherry bat he cut down and carved as a child. No lie.)

The person responsible for this promotion has to be the genius who created this mascot costume, perhaps the greatest in all of sports:

Bully!

Just ran across a great blog post in which the kids at DCenters - a blog that follows the ups and downs of DC United soccer - fill out a soccer line-up with characters from Shakespeare. Check out some of the players on their All Shakespeare Starting XI:

GK Brutus (Julius Caesar) – Your keeper should be cool, unflappable, like Brutus, who won't take a night off even if his wife kills herself by swallowing fire.

CF Macbeth – He can strike and finish, but plays withdrawn constantly checking back for the ball and looking for players ghosting out on runs. Occasionally overconfident, when he scores it's a dagger to the opposition.

ST Othello – Charges headlong on whatever Iago sends him to chase, occasionally acts too quickly for his own good, but that's what you want in a striker.

(Bench) M Hamlet -- Transfer listed, he never seems to have settled in and lacks confidence in his decision making. May have been affected by the death of his father, it is hoped that a transfer back to Elsinore FC where he'll be closer to mother and girlfriend (Bianca.... er, Ophelia) will provide him the comfort level to flourish.

(Bench) M Ariel (The Tempest) – Sometimes you need a bit of magic on the ball, and Ariel is a great choice. Excellent at winning midfield headers, like most Elemental Internationals.

(Injured Reserve) M Richard III – Leg and back problems plaguing this potential star, rumors of a bad attitude also surround him.

In my quest to bring you only the best sports stories of the day (see the Chelsea celery ban) here is the sordid story of a man and his machete.

Once more famous for being the only person with the initials UUU to ever play Major League Baseball, Venezuelan relief-pitcher Ugueth Urbina has just been sentenced to 14 years in prison for exacting vengeance with a machete. From the Associated Press, via the Seattle Times:

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Former major league pitcher Ugueth Urbina was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday for the attempted murder of five workers on his family's ranch.

Urbina, a former pitcher with the Philadelphia Phillies, was also found guilty of illegal deprivation of liberty and violating a prohibition against taking justice into his own hands during a dispute over a gun on Oct. 16, 2005, the Attorney General's Office said in a statement.

The 32-year-old free agent was accused of joining a group of men in attacking and injuring workers with machetes and pouring gasoline on them at his family's ranch, located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Caracas.