What was I reading about?

Writing headlines is an art form, one I don't practice myself, but for better or worse, every article, column and feature story has to have one. Whether written by the pros (yes, larger media sources hire people whose only job is to write headlines) or written by those of us who struggle, sometimes headlines just don't work out.

Like:

New drug offers novel approach to taming virus

If you're like me, you saw that headline and expected to read about awesome nanobots armed with whips and chairs facing down fanged and roaring viruses until those flu bugs learn to dance like circus bears. Alas, this Maggie Fox article for NBC News is doomed to disappoint.

The "taming" is about how a drug company took a drug that completely failed to do anything that it was developed to do and saved the day, maybe ... for the company at least.

I envision that, at the meeting after the test-fail results, all the company's bean counters (bathed in multi-million dollar flop sweat) sat around studying the list of side effects hoping that one of them would be a cash cow like Viagra, which started life as a failed blood pressure medication.

Alas, it's not sexy, but they think their new mystery drug might treat the body's response to flu rather than trying to fight the flu itself, thus avoiding all virus' tendency to mutate to bypass those pesky cures.

Can't wait for the headline announcing that human bodies are spontaneously mutating to fight the positive effects of the drug. Never underestimate our base, cellular-level attraction to misery and paid sick leave.

Robot finds mysterious spheres in ancient tunnel

There's really not much reason to read beyond the headline. But don't fault the headline writer, Rossella Lorenzi of Discovery.com didn't provide much but a lot of boring, minute details after the first sentence of the article:

"Hundreds of mysterious spheres lie beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, an ancient six-level step pyramid just 30 miles from Mexico City."

Nothing here to see, people, just move along.

Then there's this gem from EW.com:

AMC and OLTL make their dramatic comeback

WTW? Why should I COI when I CRTH?

(Translation: "'All My Children' and 'One Life to Live' make their dramatic comeback" — What the what? Why should I care one iota when I can't read the headline?)

Invasive predator fish that can live out of water for days to be hunted in Central Park

As if the muggers weren't bad enough. Creepy, slimy predators in Central Park — does that notion need a question mark? Or an exclamation point! Or both?!

I expected to be reading about SWAT-trained fish and game wardens mounting a full-scale assault across a sector of Central Park, with flanking sweeps through the brush, converging on the lake where team members in frog suits will take to the waters to exterminate the fish without prejudice, and social workers on hand to comfort families whose small children were taken by these freakish predators.

Nope. "Environmental officials are planning to survey a Central Park lake this week," says Tracie Strahan of NBCNewYork.com, because a "northern snakehead fish ... was quietly observed in (the lake) several years ago."

Go get 'em, tiger.

See ya in the headlines.