So I get this package in the mail from the History Channel, and I can feel that it's a couple of DVD sets, and before I open it, I think: Gotta be some more Hitler documentaries, right? Or a look at MacArthur in the South Pacific. But definitely something World War II-ish. Gotta be: It's the History Channel.

Nope: It's Jurassic Fight Club: The Complete Season One and Monster Quest: The Complete Season Two, just out from A&E Home Video.

And my geek gland starts salivating.

Whoever came up with the idea for Jurassic Fight Club is a frakkin' genius. Seriously. This could be the pinnacle achievement of human civilization: The science documentary crossed with a reality game show, with dinosaurs. How much more awesome could it be?

There's 12 episodes here on four discs, and every one of them starts out with the narrator "warning" us that "the following is a graphic depiction of a violent prehistoric battle" -- then he lets that sink in for a moment before adding, "Viewer discretion is advised." I think I can hear him snickering after that. The only "viewer discretion" I can imagine he's talking about is the kind that makes you go get the egghead five-year-old from the other room who knows all the names of the dinosaurs and can pronounce them correctly, so you can watch it together.

Oh, man, is this hilarious stuff. It's a parody of our obsession with TV violence. Volcanoes! Tectonic forces! Darwinism! Ultimate predators! Scientists on a "routine" dig make a shocking discovery -- could they have found a "70-million-year-old crime scene"? Then comes the parade of professional dinosaur geeks with the CT scans and their paleontological forensics, all in the name of explaining exactly how we know how disgusting and violent and bloody and like totally awesome the CGI-animated dino fight we're about to see actually was.

Plant-eaters attacked by carnivores! Horny males killing babies so they can mate with the mothers! Raptors versus T. Rex! It's like dino porn. The final episode in the collection is "Armageddon" -- or asteroid versus lizards! -- but the tone of pretty much every episode is: It doesn't matter with what ferocity these monsters fight to the death, because they're all doomed to extinction. Evolution, bitches! We win!

Monster Quest, by comparison, is disappointingly sedate. I mean, really: trying to be solemn and scientific about vampires, Bigfoot, lake monsters, and ghosts? But I kid our dedicated cryptozoologists.

This set is five discs totaling 20 episodes, each of which is given over to investigating the alleged realities of a single mysterious creature: the "Ohio Grassman," the "Black Beast of Exmoor," giant bears, giant squids, giant spiders, giant killer snakes, and the "boneless horror," which sounds cooler than it is: It's merely a giant octopus. Of course you also get super rats, Chupacabra, and "real dragons."

My favorite: "mega hog." Mmmm, mega bacon.

Jurassic Fight Club trained me to want sensationalism from my scientificamal documentaries, though, and now I get journalism? I guess maybe that comes from the fact that no one laughs at dinosaur hunters anymore, while Sasquatch hunters can't afford to poke any fun at themselves, even inadvertently. A sense of humor about itself, however, might have made Monster Quest a lot more fun.

But hey, at least it's not Nazis.

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MaryAnn Johanson, not a frakkin' Cylon (email me)