Monday, October 13, 2008

A Cage Match: Depth vs. Accessibility

As the lights go up on the arena, the audience roars...

Announcer: Yes, folks, today, on this beautiful Columbus Day (Canadian Thanksgiving for you Canucks), we have for you a rare event. Previously this would have been handled by way of a Socratic dialogue, but we must roll with the times, so here it is, the showdown between our reigning champion, Accessibility, and his challenger, Depth. Now, if you've been around, you know that this format favors Accessibility over Depth, but it looks like Depth has been training up by lifting heavy tomes of French philosophers. She looks remarkably buff. I'm anxious to see what happens.

Depth and Accessibility face each other in the cage.

Depth: You ready to throw down, punk? Those long nuanced sentences may not be concise, but they've built up my strength.

Accessibility: Your long sentences are worth crap. A short punch is the most powerful.

Depth: We'll see about that: you err in thinking that my deep thinking has stopped me from Karate Kid-esque training while teaching deeper substance at the same time (and using many colons and semicolons). Furthermore, I have an attention span that can grind yours into the ground.

Accessibility: You going to stand there and argue, or fight? That's what people came here to see. Let's rumble!

Depth: Don't think I can't be passionate, nuanced, and right at the same time. Bring it on, dude. Bring it on.

They pitch into each other.

[To be continued...]

Any takers for the chances of either side?

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Now now now.

Far be it from me to suggest we all get along, but I feel I must be the voice of reason.

When two concepts meet the contact can be either destructive, resulting in the death of one, or erotic, which leads instead to symbiosis and synthesis.

I don't think depth and accessibility have to exclude each other. I think they can and should make sweet sweet love

Deborah Leiter Nyabuti said...

ryanstates: Now, no fair switching metaphors on me (I was already planning on addressing yours more tomorrow). What I want to know is, given the cage-match scenario, which side would you root for, and who do you think would win?

Unknown said...

Accessibility will kick depth's ass from here to the moon(1)








(1) "The Upper Body Strength of Mass Media", Journal of Semiotic Conflict October 2003, pg. 263

Deborah Leiter Nyabuti said...

Ah, your words say one thing, and yet your footnoting practice says you have some sympathies on the other side of the coin... ;)

Unknown said...

But my lack of proper punctuation says yet another.

Deborah Leiter Nyabuti said...

Actually, a shared set of punctuational conventions is more about accessibility than it is about depth, some would say, which would mean that your lack of punctuation would be, again, on the side of depth. (Or so one could hermeneutically interpret it to be. ;)