Soft Irritation

A headline from the "Home & Garden" section of today's New York Times: "The Case for Miniature Llamas." What is this feeling I have? A soft, almost comforting irritation? A more fluid experience, swinging between mild bemusement and nearly physical revulsion? I get it a lot from New York Times headlines, whatever it is. Is it the person I imagine, reading the New York Times in a breakfast nook and calling into the other room, "Honey, we simply MUST get a miniature llama"? No... why should I care whether or not this person I just made up wants a miniature llama? Or that he is drinking tea for breakfast instead of coffee? Is this a class thing? Do I hate people with breakfast nooks? Or any kind of nooks? Is it nooks I hate? Nook. That's a funny word. Nook. Nook. Or is it the intellectual that the headline writer fantasizes, stroking his goatee and musing, half to himself, "Hmm, this article makes a good case for miniature llamas"? Is it the retired crank on the manual typewriter, composing a strongly worded rebuttal to the editor at this very moment ("There is a very good case to be made for miniature llamas, but unfortunately, this is not it. What the author fails to recognize...")? Is it that I am secretly a combination of all three of these hypothetical people? I think it's just the headline. I know it's just the headline, because I didn't read the article. A certain precocity? Is it preciously deadpan? "The Case for Miniature Llamas." Maybe I have mental problems. Nook.