Reviews are arbitrary: So here is one I wrote.

I have been thinking about my skills as a writer (or lack there of, if you are inclined to think I suck at this... and if so, please comment), and thinking I should exercise them in the worst possible way. The sort of way that if it weren't my writing skills I were testing, I might pull something, perhaps my groin. Exercise of this type is easily comparable to bungee jumping from a plane while riding an electric hybrid peddle bike with your hands on the peddles and your head firmly attached to the seat in that amusing way that the crazy-glue man's head is attached to the iron beam. I am speaking, of course, about the art (in the way a child's finger painting is considered art) of writing a review.

Now my words about reviewing are not aimed at the reviewer, because the work of one is not easy to do (nor would bungee jumping from a plane while riding an electric hybrid peddle bike with your hands on the peddles and your head firmly attached to the seat). I am quite fond of some reviewers, and their opinions I do find amusing. None the less, the very act of reviewing requires you to contort your thinking (and the way you express it - in this case writing) in positions that I do not believe are all too healthy.

To simply retell the events of the experience, the ways it delighted or the ways it did not, would be a fine expression and a healthy one too. But to do so would not be enough, for the art of reviewing is not retelling, but critiquing and explaining things too. The first part is healthy, when someone is seeking, to know what they did right, and wrong to know better. But when it is forced, uninvited, and uninformed, the results are destructive, often harmful for all. And the second part too, is healthy when needed, but can be also demeaning, insulting or just plain a bore. Combined all together, retell, do tell, and make it a bore, a review you shall have, a review, and nothing more.

To make one is troubling, and to write one a chore, but those that do do it, they will do it some more. Because saying these things in the order that they do, has a harmful effect on the review -ie and -er. One becomes jaded, puffed up, and absorbed, to think that their ideas are worth anything more than ten cents for a dozen or so, yet reviewers review, and review some more.

So this was my poem, about the art of the review. Please read it, review it, and share it until  everyone who's read it has said their point eight cents and one third. I hope you enjoy it, I know that you will, of course, thats just my review of it, and I'm biased and a shrill.

- fidgetwidget