First, I just HAVE to make a snarky comment about this little gem recently said by a spokesman for Activision:

"In [calendar year] 2010, Activision Publishing is expected to release strong, innovative new titles," Activision Publishing president Mike Griffith told analysts. "The diversified lineup will include titles based on the best selling franchises including Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Shrek, [and] Spider-Man."

"Innovative new titles?" "Diverse lineup?" Have the people working at Activision become delusional to the point of retardation? How is releasing new titles in your two most saturated franchises, indeed two of the ONLY franchises you EVER support anymore, and some crappy half-hearted movie tie-ins either innovative or diverse? The next Guitar Hero games will be EXACTLY like EVERY SINGLE GAME ever made in the franchise: A new collection of random songs that should be a ****ing DLC pack released as a brand new $60 game. Likewise the next Call of Duty is going to be made by Treyarch, which means it will be nothing more than a $60 mod of MW2 reskinned into a new setting.

Ugh...It seems like every time someone from Activision opens their mouth they say something that is a total wallbanger.

Now, the point of this post. It is a rant involving Magic: The Gathering. If you don't know anything about Magic, chances are you won't understand anything beyond this point.

So when I got back into Magic about a month ago I sold off some of the more valuable rares I don't use to get some extra cash to buy boosters from the newer sets I missed. One card was Dark Depths, a nonbasic land from Coldsnap. I never cared for the set; I bought a single fat pack from it and ended up pulling the only cards that I really cared about getting in those first few boosters, so I never bought anything else from the set.

Anyway, Dark Depths is one of those cards that is awesome in a flashy yet totally useless sort of way. It is a land that produces no mana. It's only purpose is that it can summon an uber-powerful creature, but it takes a crapton of mana and turns, to the point that 9.9 out of 10 games the battle will be over by the time you finally actually summon the creature. See, the land comes into play with 10 ice counters on it, and it takes 3 generic mana to remove just one counter. When there are no more counters on the land, you sacrifice it and get a massive 20/20 legendary Avatar that is indestructible and has flying. But, it takes 30 mana to actually summon it.

I always thought it was an awesome, albeit completely useless card. I decided to sell my only copy at the local hobby shop for $7 (It was only worth about $10 at the most at the time).

Well...A bit over a week ago some genius at a tournament used a combo to summon the 20/20 avatar for no mana and as early as turn THREE. He did this by using the Vampire Hexmage, an uncommon new card that came out in the most recent set. By using the Hexmage's sacrifice ability he can remove all of Dark Depths' ice counters and get the creature it summons for basically free. Or, if you count the Hexmage's mana cost, for only two black.

Suddenly, demand for Dark Depths has SKYROCKETED. The hobby shop owner ended up selling my very copy of Dark Depths for $60. The days following this combo surfacing on the Internet the card was selling for HUNDREDS on eBay. Things are slowing down now, but you can still find the card going for $25-$50 on eBay.

Had I just waited a few more weeks I could have sold this card for A LOT more money! DAMMIT!! gnu53netbye5ntrnrtj46nebhghr45uy3nhebhtehnjrsmjntbhebhtnetjem5netbh I HATE it when junk rares I've gotten rid of for a low price suddenly become a LOT more useful and worth tons of money because of a new set!

Now...I'm waiting for the set that suddenly makes the king of junk rares, One With Nothing, worth craploads of cash. I pulled FIVE of that bastard when I collected Saviors!

Sorry guys, I must vent. Rant incoming.

Okay, so my dad's side of the family has a big Christmas party every year. We normally hold it on Christmas Eve. In about October we have a drawing. You reach into a hat, draw a name, and that is the person you buy a gift for. The limit is usually about $25. This is the way we have done it for DECADES.

Well, one of my aunts is being all difficult this year.

She wants us to try something different because "we always do it like this." Well duh, it is because it WORKS. Everyone gets a person to buy for and everyone gets a gift that they want. This year she wants to do a "white elephant" type thing, where everyone just brings a roughly $25 gift and we all just shuffle the gifts around and randomly distribute them.

Yeah...no. Everyone keeps trying to tell her that this simply WILL NOT WORK because we have too many people with too many different ages. We have five adult men, four adult women, four men in their early 20s (That includes myself) a girl in her early 20s, a thirteen year old boy, a twelve year old boy, a ten year old girl, a ten year old boy, a seven year old girl, a three year old girl, and an infant that is almost one. Add in the very, VERY wide variety of interests and you can see why this would be a total nightmare. Everyone keeps trying to tell my aunt that it just wouldn't work, we would run into too many situations where a guy got something like perfume or a 3 year old girl got something like, say, an R rated action movie, or a grown man getting a Barbie doll.

But no, my aunt is CONVINCED that this retarded way of changing the drawing would be so much better. She keeps saying "well, if someone does run into that situation then they could just bring it back and exchange it after Christmas." Or, you know, we can keep doing things like we have for ****ing DECADES and not have to worry about fighting the post-Christmas exchange and gift card shopping war.

Ugh...of course this is screwing up all the rest of us. Most of us aren't procrastinators and like to get our shopping done well before Christmas. For example, my mom is usually done by the middle of November. Of course this aunt has never been the brightest bulb on the chandelier. I remember once when I was in high school I put on her list some Magic boosters from the newest set. We told her to shop at the local hobby shop, which is less than three minutes from the mall and gave her clear directions on how to get there. The following conversation happened at the party:

"I never want to shop for Magic cards again, they are too hard to find."

-A few of my other aunts and mom look at her strange because they have never had any trouble finding Magic cards for presents.-

"Really? -local hobby shop- always has plenty of Magic cards."

"Oh, I didn't shop there. I tried the mall, but none of the stores there sell Magic cards. I then checked out several Gamestops, K-Mart, Target, three Wal-Marts, and Toys R Us. I finally found them about a week later at a Wal-Mart!"

I'm not one to complain about authors/books I've never read. Nor am I one to swear off books by an author because of the author's behavior. However, I'm going to make an exception.

As you all probably know I've been getting back into fantasy literature. Thorough my search for good fantasy literature I've come across a self-published author named Robert Stanek. All of his books have hundreds of overwhelmingly positive reviews on Amazon. But, digging a little deeper reveals the truth: Robert Stanek is a fraud. The sheer number of distasteful things this sad, sad little man has done in the name of self-promotion makes it hard to figure out where to even start, but I'll try.

First, I'll start with one of the most distasteful things: He makes up praise for his books and attributes it to famous, GOOD authors in the genre that are very well known and loved. On one of his websites (Yes, ONE of his websites, he has multiple ones used to promote himself including fake fansites made entirely of accounts he and his friends and family made) he claims that he is very good friends with beloved young adult fantasy author Brian Jacques (The Redwall series) and posts fake quotes attributed to Jacques praising Stanek's work. He even goes one further. He posted a picture of Jacques at a book signing and photoshopped himself sitting next to him at the table...but forgot to photoshop his legs into the picture. If you are going to photoshop pictures, make sure you have all your body parts in the picture!

Needless to say, Jacques eventually heard about this and demanded he take the photo and fake quotes attributed to himself and other famous authors down. So now Stanek is forced to get by with unattributed fake quotes praising his work, or fake quotes attributed to random reviewers on Amazon. Poor guy.

The next major campaign of distaste he launched is just as bad. He has thoroughly exploited Amazon's review system by creating TONS of fake accounts and getting family and friends to do the same. He uses all these fake accounts to post dozens and dozens of fake 5 star reviews and to get Amazon to remove genuine low score reviews by using all his accounts to complain and report the bad reviews for trolling. He also starts threads in the Amazon discussion boards and carries on gushing fan discussions with himself using the dozens of fake accounts he made.

It gets worse. Not too long ago many fantasy literature fans noticed a very suspicious flood of 1 star reviews directed at many moderately well known fantasy authors that have highly rated novels, such as Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind) and Steve Erikson (The Malazan Book of the Fallen fantasy epic series) The reviews often directed people towards other authors, such as George R. R. Martin (Song of Fire and Ice series), Tolkien, Rowling, and ROBERT STANEK. Closer inspection reveals that the people writing the flood of 1 star reviews are the same people who wrote all the praising reviews for Stanek's own work. Yep, you guessed it right. Stanek and his family/friends began using all those dozens of fake accounts to promote Stanek by BRINGING DOWN THE RATING SCORES OF OTHER AUTHORS and recommending other "quality" authors while slipping in a plug for Stanek's novels! Amazon eventually caught on and deleted many of the reviews, but a few are still around. Even still, Stanek keeps using these fake accounts to troll those same authors by making (And responding to via other fake accounts) negative threads in the discussion boards bashing the authors.

To add insult to injury Stanek also actively searches for blogs, websites, and reviews around the Internet that are critical of his work and unsavory marketing tactics and tries to get them removed, often with the threat of legal action, but other times by spamming the sites in question.

Never let this sad, sad little hack of a man get your money. Never buy his books. Don't do ANYTHING that could result in him getting your money. Look him up and you'll find tons of websites showing proof of the very things I just talked about. Heck, many fantasy literature fansites have taken down the Robert Stanek page and replaced it with a message saying that they have removed him due to his overzealous and dishonest self-promotion marketing campaigns.

Besides, you aren't missing much. The way I understand it all his books are crappy, generic Tolkien-esque rip-offs with terrible writing anyway.