Like any couple who’s cohabited for a while, Karon and I have our cherished rituals. One of them, for us, involves the SyFy channel.

The SyFy channel runs marathons of disaster and science fiction movies that, as far as I can tell, are made specifically for that channel. The production values range from near zero to adequate, as do the (always) computer-generated special effects. The dialogue is often ham-handed and silly; occasionally, when the story has to give background, they’ll put words in the mouth of some scientist character and it’s done so badly that the word “exposition” should flash across the bottom of the screen.

So, obviously, Karon and I were all over “Sharknado.” It’s become something of a viral sensation, since on its first showing enough people were watching it that it was all over Twitter. So, they’ve shown it at least twice more since and last weekend, it was the finale of an entire afternoon of shark-theme movies.

Just in case you’ve missed the media hype around it, “Sharknado” is about tornadoes that are born over the ocean, pick up sharks (and, somehow, nothing but sharks; there is no “guppienado”) and drop them over Los Angeles, which is flooded by the huge storms rolling in from the ocean. Mayhem ensues. The scene that’s gotten the most play is the end, where the hero, who has a chainsaw, literally dives into a giant shark’s gullet and then cuts his way out with the chainsaw. There’s an extra little surprise in there for us bad-movie aficionados, but I won’t ruin it for you just in case you haven’t yet seen the flick. The ending is so over-the-top stupid and implausible that the only thing you can do is laugh.

Like all such SyFy movies, the science behind it could charitably be called “questionable.” That’s part of their charm, though. The writers are generally just good enough to come up with some scientific-sounding banana oil to explain whatever scientific phenomenon is endangering folks. Of course, sometimes they don’t even try; one of the shark marathon flicks was about a giant two-headed shark and they make only the weakest pass at explaining where it came from. And nobody in “Sharknado” ever points out the selective nature of what the tornados sweep up out of the ocean.

But then, only a Michele Bachmann voter would watch a show like “Sharknado” and expect to learn anything about science. It’s more fun if you just go with it.

I’ve always been a bad movie fan, providing the movie fits the “so bad it’s good” category. There are some movies that are just bad without having the redeeming quality of being at least entertaining. I think I lasted through about 15 minutes of “Howard the Duck,” a legendarily bad piece of cinema. The dialogue, rather than being amusingly goofy, was just cringe-inducing. I’m guessing they had to fumigate every theater that showed it.

But a truly great bad movie – it has to be a perfect marriage of bad dialogue, stupid plotting and sub-‘70s-porno production values – can be a joy to watch. The gold standard (or manure standard, as the case may be) is “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” the Ed Wood Jr. masterpiece. One little tidbit: Bela Lugosi was the star and died days into production, after he’d finished shooting a couple of scenes. Wood replaced him with a guy who was obviously much taller and walked around his scenes holding a cape over his face. It would be like making a movie about Lindsay Lohan and giving the lead to the guy who plays Jaws in the James Bond flicks.

But the sheer brazenness of the untalented people involved make it fascinating and very funny to watch. Wood (the subject of a great Johnny Depp movie) really thought he was a great director. He was an Idea Guy. Unfortunately, he simply didn’t have even the barest minimum of talent to realize his ideas. About the biggest talent he had was talking people out of money to get his movies made.

Wood’s other magnum opus, “Glen or Glenda,” is one of the strangest movies in history. Wood was a transvestite with a taste for angora sweaters. In fact, he was a World War II Marine paratrooper and wore women’s underwear under his uniform during combat. “Glen or Glenda” is a bizarre plea for understanding of cross-dressers.

The people who make things like “Sharknado” actually are more talented than Wood, albeit not so’s you’d notice. Very few of them are ever going to be composing an Oscar acceptance speech. Still, the movies are at least watchable. The CGI is often pretty good — or at least as good as you’re going to get on a low-budget movie – and the plotting, silly and implausible as it often is, is at least good enough that it sort of sucks you in. And every once in a while, there will be something that indicates the moviemakers were in on the joke. There’s a kind of amusing sight gag in “Sharknado,” for example: When the sharks start landing on the ground in Los Angeles, one of them hits the cement at the Chinese Theater, famed for its impressions of stars’ hand and footprints in cement. The shark destroys a set of handprints, but leaves behind a perfect impression of its shape. That kind of tells you right there that the moviemakers knew they weren’t exactly filming “Citizen Kane.”

I know it may sound illogical to spend one’s leisure time watching bad movies, but you really ought to try it. The next time Syfy runs one of its marathons, put your brain on hold, grab a beverage and some chips and settle in. Hell, it’s on basic cable, so it’s not like it will cost you anything but some time. And it might even be helpful, in a way. The next time you’re having a bad day at work, you can at least tell yourself that no matter how badly you botched the job, you’re better than “Sharknado.” The secret to happiness sometimes is to set the bar low.