My good friend Anonymous is back!

This gem was actually posted on FCF, but I cross-posted the article at both sites, so I figured I'd share it with the rest of you here on TFB. Yep, it's another mind-blowingly brilliant comment from the one, the only, Anonymous. If I ever start a fan club, he'd be the President without a doubt. This particular missive was written with regards to my article "Ten Reasons Why Soccer Sucks," and is sadly not a complaint that the piece was too short. Ready? Let's go.

Shame,...closed, small minds will always remain closed, small minds.
Enjoy the rest of your uneducated life.

That's the first time can recall ever seeing a comma immediately precede an ellipsis, which is possibly a consequence of my small mind and lack of education. I suppose that, even despite my aversion to formal schooling and the minscule size and opacity of my brain, I'll try to address this landmark with scholarly discourse.

1) I'm not sure the central thesis here is in any way correct. Isn't there a chance than closed, small minds might expand in both their knowledge base and willingness to explore new ideas? Like you used to be a real hard-headed dummy but you relaxed a bit and changed your way of thinking on things? I bet this has happened.

2) I used to be a Republican, attended church regularly, and didn't even particularly like Nine Inch Nails, not so long ago. I'm going to go ahead and say I'm not particularly closed-minded, which I believe is one of the chief implications being leveled against me here on the basis of not liking a staggeringly boring sport. I used to think ice hockey was pretty dumb, and now I love the game, so even in the arena of sports, I've demonstrated the ability to rethink my views. Besides, I'm a scientist, and we're defined by willingness to consider new evidence and allow it to shape our views. I guess you, the reader, will have to weight these facts against a sloppily-written two-line ad hominem attack by some fucking asshole douchebag who's too much of what Pulp Fiction's Vincent Vega once memorably called a "dickless piece of shit" to even use his own name, lest anyone know what a moron he is. Did I say that out loud? Well, I usually exercise restraint on TFB, but there's something about being called small-minded that rankles me to the extent that I start using words like "rankle."

3) Wait, wait, wait...does this mean that I can't even dislike something without being closed- and small-minded? That seems both capricious and arbitrary. I even provided numerous facts to support my argument! There are certainly instances where people exhibit close-minded tendencies, and perhaps I do with respect to some things (Phil Collins, for example), but my disdain for soccer doesn't make me a priori the owner of a small, closed mind. You can tell by the way I use arbitrary Latin phrases as window dressing in my writing. I've considered the game of soccer at length, I've watched the last five world cups, I played as a kid and as a college student - it's not as if I've not given this topic any thought. I have, and I still think it sucks. Maintaining a view even after considerable evaluation is not a hallmark of close-mindedness nor small-mindedness, though my head does look a lot smaller since my last haircut.

4) Uneducated? I totally went to college!

5) That kicker line might be the single most smug sentence ever committed to print, and I've read George Will's columns. It's unreal. Can you imagine someone saying that to someone else in the real world? It's also a bit bizarre in that I'm obviously not uneducated with respect to soccer, which I don't even like. You might not agree with my feelings on the game, and obviously Footy McBalls here doesn't, but my position is clearly not one borne of ignorance. I can name all the positions and their roles (wings and centers fail to score, halfbacks keep the ball near midfield, fullbacks block for halfbacks, and goalies wear different-coloured jerseys), I understand the penalties (they're mostly variations on tripping), scoring (one goal is awarded per goal), basic strategy (battle to a tie and destroy your opponent on penalty kicks), top teams (The United States of America), and so on.

Hope you enjoyed. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an uneducated life to enjoy. Maybe there's a good match on.