Two words:
Shark Week.

Maybe you’ve never heard of it before.  Maybe you’re scratching your head because it sounds like a cheap ’60s horror flick.  Maybe you really just don’t care and will resort to watching numerous Jersey Shore reruns on MTV. If that’s the case, I hope you accept my deepest of apologies, because you are missing out on the greatest thing to happen to TV since, well, TV.

What makes Shark Week so damn wonderful? Why should a bunch of college girls give up going to the beach to watch the beach on TV? Simple:

It’s Like Watching a Car Crash
Who would ever think sitting on your couch and watching a bunch of 1,000 pound fish swim around the ocean with their bloody mouths half open would be entertaining? This guy. You can’t look away. You sit down to watch a quick Shark Episode (there are six new ones this year) and you literally cannot leave.  I’m serious. Your life slows down, and suddenly you’ve been sitting on your couch for 5 hours watching sharks give you the stank eye through the high-def screen.

The Serial Killer Syndrome
I read in a book once that people are fascinated with serial killers because they’ve never met one themselves.  Not in a way where they want to meet one, but in a weird way we feel like they don’t exist. I think the same things goes with sharks.  We know they exist, but we’ve never come face to face with a living, breathing, blood thirsty shark. (And those who have most likely didn’t live to tell the tale…) That means, watching a week fulfilled with stories about them is like a creepy and addicting fairytale. And it’s great.

Shark Week is the Modern Jaws
It’s simple. People nowadays like Shark Week the same way people liked the premier of Jaws in the ’70s.  It’s horrific, it’s gory, it’s mysterious.  It’s the reality TV show drama without the whining and complaining. Serve me up some of that.  Although Shark Week provides you with a ton of amazing shark facts, the ideal appeal comes in when the facts are combined with real horror fantasies. Basically, you are sitting there watching Shark Week like a Hollywood E! True Story on Hammerheads. I guarantee, the story almost trumps Lindsay Lohan’s.

Cool Marine Cinematography
Go ahead, call me a nerd. But good cinematography underwater, amongst sharks, needs to be recognized and deeply appreciated. For example, do you watch ‘Life’ hear Oprah’s soft voice talk about lizard sex? I think not; it’s all about the amazing cinematography.

August Is a Slow Month
Admit it – between getting really sick of your summer job and hanging around your parents’ house in the thick heat, the beginning of August is getting a little boring.  Shark Week swoops in at just the right time for you to escape to the darkness of your basement and dive right down to the depths of the under waters to watch sharks eat stuff. And that’s awesome.

Shark Week premiers Sunday night at 9 on Discovery.

I’ll be honest: I’m a bitch. I have no problem telling it like it is, talking about someone behind his/her back or telling secrets about people I hate. This is why people fight to stay on my good side.

Which is why people are so surprised when they find out about my passion for animals. I cry when those commercials for animal shelters come on the TV, I have to look away from movies or TV shows when an animal gets injured and I wanted to personally kill Michael Vick when it was discovered he was running that evil dog fighting ring.

It is weird, I know, but I can’t help but feel for creatures who don’t have a voice to defend themselves. Yes, even if they have the teeth or claws to do so.

Like sharks. (Yes, I am being completely serious!) Sharks are most often thought of as predators, but lately off the coast of Florida they have become victims. In the past year more and more sharks have been found murdered in the water. There is no excuse for harming another life – especially an innocent one – and it is up to us to protect every creature on this planet.

Please take a moment to sign the attached petition and protect the sharks and our planet’s wildlife.

Ben and Jen: Super Fertile.

Too cloudy to go to the beach? Add these 80′s classics to your Netflix queue.

Exclusive look at the crazy new script from Tarantino. Awww yeah!

Nothing ruins a day at the beach quite like a shark. And I really needed a tan!

The new iPhone is out. We are not too happy about it, but what do the critics say?

Teen pregnancy on the up and up for the first time in over a decade. Could this be Juno’s doing?

Also on the rise, Wal-Mart stores. They. Are. Everywhere.

As if TV couldn’t get any worse – Nicole Richie gets another show.

2 words that should never go together: orgasmic and childbirth. Yes, there is a video.

Maybe this will inspire you to recycle. Think of the dolphins, people!

Gender equality on the road at last! Well, at least on the signs. Baby steps, ladies; baby steps.

I had a lot of nightmares as a kid. Thanks to these nightmares and various frightening films I’ve developed a hilarious set of OCD habits such as opening and closing closet doors before sleeping and checking behind the shower curtain before I saddle up to the toilet (you laugh but one day someone is gonna be in there and then who’s the dumb one!)

My imagination is easily inspired. For a while I couldn’t even watch a commercial for a horror movie because I knew those 30 seconds were enough to create an entire world of horrific fantasy that I’d be trapped inside for the rest of the evening. The one thing more unnerving then horror characters and sharks (I don’t swim in the ocean, at all, ever) is muppets.

Not all muppets, Kermit is fine, Fozzy, whatever. I’m talking about those LSD muppets that creators slip in films and TV shows, mixed with other cute, lovable creatures. They lure you in with Grover and then BAM, some abomination walks onto the screen that’s burned into your mind forever. Some horribly disfigured, warbly voiced monstrosity that may as well be drenched in blood, because thats how you’ll remember them, regardless.

Here’s five of the worst perpetrators.

5) Sesame Street’s Big Bad Wolf

He first appeared in a mock ‘News Report’ that Kermit was doing about the story of the 3 Little Pigs, but eventually was cast in a full time role in my brain as the monster that lived in the crawlspace behind our dryer. His nose and mouth are almost crocodilian in length, making him a hybrid death machine that can not only eat you whole, but smell (and enjoy) your fear.

4) Sesame Street’s Yip Yip Aliens

Who the f*ck invented these? I’ve seen like 3/4th’s of every science fiction movie ever and I’ve never observed a more frightening rendition of creatures from another planet. They have no body, and their circular mouths are contorted into a look of excruciating pain. The sound they omit — ‘Yip Yip‘ — over and over gives them an almost zombie-like demeanor. Incapable of love or communication, their race knows only war.

3) Skeksis from ‘The Dark Crystal’

Bird reptiles that appear to have some type of bizarre bone disease and turn infantile when they die/age. As someone who grew up around wild turkeys, the thought of gangs of intelligent, upright walking, violent minded birds hit very close to home.

2) The Rockbiter from ‘The Never-ending Story’

Could you have designed a more horribly disfigured face? My cousins would loop this scene and force me to watch it as a form of torture.

1) The Fiery Gang from ‘The Labyrinth’

A gang of forest dwelling, possible serial rapist apes who sing about ‘showing you a good time’ while removing their limbs and creating a gallery of horrifyingly twisted body shapes. Then they try to rip your head off, in an effort to make you more like them. Awesome, just awesome.

[Got any childhood fears induced by muppets? We want to know]

Now, a lot of you out there may associate Spring Break with places like Cancun, Florida, the Bahamas, and other tropical paradises where there’s nothing to do except drink weird fruity things with tiny paper umbrellas floating in them.

And while I have nothing against fruity drinks and paper umbrellas (not to mention scantily clad people lathered up with suntan lotion), Spring Break can be a time for more than just getting a tan and having seven nights of hook-ups you regret later. It can be a time to actually do some good.

The Isabela Oceanographic Institute (IOI), a Florida-based non-profit organization that deals with both American and European study abroad programs, has one of the most amazing Spring Break opportunities around: spend a week in the Galapagos islands while researching ways for them to stay self sufficient.

Not only do you get 3 credits, room and board, and professors from all over the world, but you also get to do things like snorkel with sharks, horseback ride along the rim of volcanoes, and check out those famous giant Galapagos turtles. Plus, the week concludes with discussions and analysis of ways to help perpetuate a healthy fishing culture on the island.

The due date for the Spring Break application is February 10th, so you better get your papers in quickly—but even if you can’t move things around fast enough, the Isabela Oceanographic Institute has a summer and semester option.

Beaches, tropical sun, snorkeling, tans, doing good…I see nothing wrong with this equation. Tell all your friends to have a good time getting wasted at skeezy Senior Frogs, and that you’ll mail them a postcard from the Galapagos.