A Little Reviews Preview

My eyes grow dim, I cannot see.
I have not brought my specs with me

Actually in this case, my eyes really are growing dim. We’re no longer terrified of a detached retina, but I have been ordered by the eye doctor to take it easy. So instead of a comprehensive review of book reviews on Amazon, you’ll be getting a sort of 30,000 foot view. I’ll save the good stuff for later.

We go through periodic episodes of angst and agita on Facebook when people start talking about reviews. These conversations are revisited over and over again, and I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t think they accomplish much. Readers are going to do as they wish, writers are going to worry, and I predict things are going to go along much as they are now for quite some time.

Recently I found I needed a little help with chopping things up in the kitchen. I’ve never owned a food processor, and I found the price of the things to be somewhat daunting. I simply won’t need all those features. I just needed something that chopped up vegetables.

I found there were several possible solutions:

• Large plastic boxes with lids. The user places the desired vegetables beneath the lid on a sort of window, then mashes down on the lid. The vegetables are chopped and fall into the box below.
• Plungers: Place small quantities of vegetables in a jar and add a lid with attached blades. Plunge furiously until the blades have sliced and diced the veg.
• Outboard motors: To be frank, I could not figure out quite how these work. There is a string attached to the lid. Pull on it with some force and the blades inside the box somehow mysteriously chop stuff.
• Miniature Food Processors: I found myself quite at home among these. They are like big food processors only smaller, less full-featured, and mercifully cheaper.

I chose one with a brand name I recognized and pressed “add to cart.” But wait! This was Amazon. Let me read a few of the one-star reviews before I give them access to my plastic! The little star buttons indicated that only seven per cent of the total reviews were one-star. While that would be a huge total to one of our JAFF authors, the little mini-processor had almost 25,000 reviews in total.

Some of the one-stars seemed entirely reasonable. We had units that melted or smoked or burned. We had units that left deposits of plastic in the food and units that became deformed in the dishwasher. But a number of the reviews will resonate with JAFF authors. For example:

• Baby and Cat Killing Machine! If you leave the unit plugged in; and If you leave the lid off the unit; and If your cat is a climber (or your baby); Then, the possibility of mayhem awaits. I’m not sure who would do that, but they should be warned.
• The Product Registration Info is Unconscionable! This reviewer was really irate. Apparently the product registration requests one’s date of birth. Big Brother is watching your chopper. Apparently the machine itself is okay.
• IT’S NOT A CHOPPER, IT’S A PULVERIZER: Oh, dear! The all caps title says it all.

In any case, I need to quit writing now and rest my eye, as after this many years of hard use, I cannot give my Creator a bad review for it. As soon as it stops malfunctioning, I will finish my research and write up what I hope will be a good discussion.