resist encouraging my already irrational fear of sharks with my (equally strong) morbid fascination with Shark Week on Discovery, and movies like "Jaws" and "Deep Blue Sea"

Alright, this one’s gonna be wordy… but – if you will – allow me to be completely and utterly straight with you for a moment, in order to possibly clarify the importance of this goal:

I have a tremendous, overwhelming fear of sharks. (That still seems like an understatement. I’ll try again.) Sharks… horrify me to the depths of my very soul. Now, rationally, I know that sharks are misunderstood animals, and I know all of the statistics about how you’re more likely to (fill in the blank with something unlikely) than be attacked by a shark. Doesn’t matter. (In fact, simply looking at the picture I posted along with this entry makes my heart race.)

So, normally, with a fear like this, a rational person would just… avoid the thing that scares them, right? In my case, it certainly wouldn’t be hard – I’m from the Midwest, with no beaches, nothing remotely ocean-like for miles… unless sharks decide to magically start showing up in Lake Superior, I really have nothing to worry about. I could just avoid the idea completely, and go on my merry way.

But nooo.

See, whenever anything remotely shark-related comes on TV, I’m completely glued to the set. It’s like a car crash, where it’s horrifying, but you just. can’t. stop. watching. My sick, masochistic need to do this to myself is completely bewildering to me, but there you have it.

Now, watching Shark Week can occasionally ease my fears by being informative and reassuring (“sharks aren’t killing machines!” “punch them in the eye, and they’ll leave you alone!”) But, for every Shark Week, there is a shlocky, cheesy, awesome horror-fest movie like Deep Blue Sea. Now, I can appreciate that this movie is ridiculously awful. But, I’ve got to say, there’s nothing like enormous, as-long-as-a-bus, genetically modified genius super-sharks working in teams to systematically kill all the humans to get my imagination humming into overdrive. And I can’t stop watching. I watch that movie every time it’s on.

Clearly, there is no way I will ever recover from my mind-blowingly dumb shark phobias if I can’t tear myself away from movies about them bizarrely murdering every human being in their path. (one shark actually hurls a helicopter at someone. You really, really need to see this movie.)

...I need help.