Summer vacation is officially here. The sun is shining as bright as ever, outdoor pools are open, birds are a-chirpin’ and, most importantly, you don’t have to worry about finals or papers.

For most of us college kids, summer is the time to put our hair down, relax and do things we can’t ordinarily do during the semester. Some people make the mistake of thinking that, no matter how long the vacation is, they’ll run out of things to do. If you believe this, you haven’t experienced a real summer. No matter how much planning to be productive you’ve done, including road trips or adventures to Frontier City, you can’t escape those blocks of time that seem to last forever with nothing to do.

Most people use different methods to deal with these little bits of Purgatory and none of them are healthy - watching endless hours of bad television, playing video games, gorging yourself on a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Americone Dream and so on. These things are what I like to call summer’s guilty pleasures; we all have them and they are awfully embarrassing. Which brings me to my summer guilty pleasure. Beware, this is extremely embarrassing.

I follow gossip websites. You name it, I’ve been to it. I don’t ordinarily track celeb news, tweets or blogs. However, when summer comes, I’m on www.perezhilton.com saying, “Oh my Gaga, he did not do that!” and looking at a pictures of Rihanna with “Skank” or “Slut” written all over them courtesy of the eloquent Mr. Hilton. I spent countless hours every summer reading blog after blog from Crunk and Disorderly to D-listed.

Hypocritically, I make fun of most of my friends who usually follow celebrity gossip because I find it pathetic to follow the lives of the rich and famous. Why would anyone care about why Paris Hilton isn’t friends with Nicole Ritchie anymore or who Lindsay Lohan’s new girlfriend is? It reminds me of the 1980s classic movie “They Live.” In the film, aliens have taken over the world by hiding subliminal messages in media in order to control the ignorant masses. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I can’t figure out why magazines like People, Us and other gossip rags stay in business. Yet every year, like clockwork, I’m subscribing to some of the best gossip sites on the Web. Why? I have no idea.

The blogs I usually read are about the fall of some great celebrity or the blogger just insulting them. It’s sadistic, but I can’t help it. There is just so much joy seeing something beautiful destroyed. And by beautiful, I mean what the media has constructed and forced us to believe is significant while ignoring important news.

The best bloggers write about celebrities they don’t know with a certain kind of confidence and personal knowledge of the said celebrity that only a direct relative can have. I like to think of it as having a sassy little brother that loves nothing better than to tell everyone your secrets during family reunions. Perez Hilton is actually a very good example. He refers to celebrities by their first names, gives them advice and outright insults them for mistakes they’ve made.

By the time the summer is over, I will have enough juicy celebrity gossip to put E! watchers to shame. Trust me, this isn’t a good thing. Yet, no matter how embarrassing, useless or cringe-worthy they are, everyone is entitled to a guilty pleasure, right?

- Osizimete Aken’ova is a film and video studies senior.