Headlines are meant to entice.  They're the written word's equivalent of a come on: the lacy bra just peeking above the deep V-neck tee; the squib of skin that shows between jeans and tee when a guy bends over to tie his shoe.  They may promise more than they're giving, but when you see them, you just have to go a little further. 

Except on OS.  On OS headlines are pedantic and witless, promising nothing.

I couldn't believe there were so many dreadful posts on the front page of OS today, so I made myself click through past the headlines.  I was right: there aren't so many dreadful posts.  Just dreadful headlines.  And these weren't even the headlines the writer  came up with.  

My Gender-Bender, Victor/Victoria Cruise, a title which is short, pithy, and iconographic became "I was the straight woman on a gay cruise."  In one swell foop the post morphed from a  humorous memoir to a tiresome travel piece.  Auntie Mame shapeshifted to Agnes Gooch.

The Gift of the Calculi  is a clever way of introducing a story about both Christmas and kidney stones.  It devolved to neither of those in the OS headline, My Flight From Hell. 

How to Survive Spanish Service, which is a disquisition on tourism, cultural mores, and Spain, became I Dined And Dashed At A Spanish Restaurant.

In all three of these cases--and frankly I didn't have the heart to pursue my research further--there was absolutely no reason I could see for changing the headline.  Someone, someone with a paucity of imagination or who is just plain tired, has sucked the juice out of the bloggers' own titles and rendered them--well, pedantic and witless.   Could that someone please go elsewhere.  Or take a nap.