Website tagline incites savage criticism from thousands of entomologists around the world
When Chris Lux Hayes learned he needed to come up with a tagline for his new author website, he thought, Oh, this will be easy. For years now, I’ve been spouting a pithy idiom that blows away all comers. I came up with the breezy slogan on my own, too.
Hayes was all set to type “Write like the wind” into the tagline box in the WordPress customizing section when his brain said, “Maybe you should google your little masterstroke, you know, just in case somebody else came up with the idea first.”
“What? No way, that’s a stupid suggestion,” Hayes told his brain. “I’m always cranking out unique zingers. I’m a zinger machine.”
“I honestly don’t care what you do. I’m just your brain.”
Hayes rubbed his temples with his fingertips, noting how his thoughts always arrived like fugitives from nowhere, but ended up getting trapped by the walls of his skull until they fuzzed out, suffocated, or went on a rant.
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“My head is a prison with 100 billion cells.” 😕
— Crikey, the hardest-working goon quoll in Moonbow
“I know you’re wrong,” Hayes told his brain as he sat down in front of his iMac. He navigated to the Google homepage and entered his potential tagline as a search term enclosed by quotation marks.
The top result on the first page was a YouTube video titled “Write Like the Wind.” Hayes watched the video with an increasingly weird look on his face.
“What’s this all about?” he asked out loud.
“Looks like those musicians are telling George R.R. Martin to hurry up and finish his Ice and Fire series,” his brain observed. “This Martin fellow, he seems like a somewhat better-known writer than you.”
“Now what do I do?” Hayes grumbled after scanning a couple related online stories. “I’ll never come up with a tagline as good as the one they glued to the guy who invented Hodor, Littlefinger, and Bronn, not to mention Arya Stark.”
“I think you should give up writing and give me something more productive to do,” his brain advised, “like sleeping, for instance.”
Crikey’s dragonfly muse gallery
“Write like the wind on a planet with no atmosphere.” 🙃
— Crikey, the hardest-working goon quoll in Moonbow
The tagline saga continues…
“I’ve got an idea,” the author’s brain spoke up after a tense interval.
“You? Since when?” Hayes replied.
His brain ignored the insult. “How about ‘Write like a dragonfly’?”
“Dragonflies don’t write.”
“Technically speaking, neither does the wind,” his brain replied. “Then again, everything writes. Words are hardly the only units of language. After all, actions speak—”
“I do like dragonflies,” Hayes interrupted. “Remember what Chimo Nudd told Windigo in Buddha Rex?”
“How could I forget?” his brain responded with a yawn.
Hayes located the novel manuscript on his iMac, found the correct page, and started reading:
Excerpt from BUDDHA REX
“This business about green foxes and motherworld goddesses and blind-bargain messiahs unwinds as really sad under rigid analysis,” Chimo replied, getting excited. “I like the dragonfly angle, though. Real-life dragonflies are quite interesting. Pound for pound, the dragonfly is the world’s most talented predator across any element.
“Dragonflies are master aerialists and use sophisticated midair interception tactics to seize their prey at a ninety-five percent success rate. Their eyes have thirty thousand facets and provide three-sixty, hunter-killer vision in ultra-color, UV, and polarized light. They eat in flight using a rip-crush chewing system that purées often crunchy meals into a squishy, ambrosial pabulum.”
Windigo was making a woebegone face by the time Chimo paused to take a breath. “I ate dragonflies fried in coconut oil while on R&R in Bali,” the Indian said. “Children used long poles with sticky pads on strings to fish them out of the air.”
Crikey’s dragonfly muse gallery
“You can’t dumb down luck.” 🤨
— Crikey, the hardest-working goon quoll in Moonbow
Chimo narrowed his eyes as if challenged. “Yeah, but what if you went to a place where dragonflies are the size of condors? You could toss those same children off a cliff and not one would reach the ground. Nobody’s beating dragonflies in a dogfight, not even Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightnings.”
Windigo scratched the back of his head while giving Chimo a sideways look. “I guess that rules out kids screaming in a tailspin like water balloons filled with blood.”
Chimo opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, his brow compressed in thought. “I thought we were talking about Sapientology,” he eventually said.
“I don’t know what we’re talking about,” the Indian admitted.
Drawing a tagline in the sand…
“Yes, maybe we are onto something,” Hayes told his brain.
“Looks to me like dragonflies are the ones who can write like the wind,” his brain said.
“You have to like how I think,” Hayes grunted, not really listening. “Let’s go with the dragonfly tagline. I’m always giving my brain the best ideas.”
“Wait, what?”
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“Kindness should not be less common than sense.” 🦄
— Crikey, the hardest-working goon quoll in Moonbow
Aftermath…
Two weeks later, the author’s website received its first-ever comment. Brace Abingdon, PhD, some muckety-muck at Pomona College in California, seemed upset about the new tagline, writing:
Hello there, you poop-filled whiffle ball,
Where. Do. You. Get. Off?
Write like a dragonfly? Whatever made you think you could compare yourself to nature’s perfect ganking gizmo? You must have Category X hubris fluxing through your veins along with snot-flavored Kool-Aid.
I’m not a dragonfly, but I sure hope they sue you into the grave and then drop your shrieking corpse into a giant pitcher plant filled with parasitic worms.
All the best,
Dr. Brace Abingdon
Entomology Department Chair
Pomona College
International Oding Society President 1992–Present
After that, the proverbial blood gates blew open. Entomologists on all seven continents began messaging the author’s website with all kinds of mean remarks. The worst perps were the pure odonatists, professional and amateur. Those swivel-eyed extremists scrutinize dragonflies and damselflies belonging to the taxonomic order Odonata.
Disciples of this worldwide tribe are feverishly devoted to their insectile idols even to the point of shadowing dragonfly larvae, or nymphs, who are themselves accomplished ambush predators. Hayes soon learned going out to spy on dragonflies and damselflies is called oding and anyone who goes oding is called an oder.
The author’s website continues receiving dozens of barbs, digs, and jibes every day, most if not all shrewdly hateful. Some are quite frightening, especially the comments that claim flights of soul-snatcher darners are coming to sew the author’s eyes and mouth shut.
“What have I done?” Hayes moaned.
“What do you mean?” his brain giggled. “This is awesome.”
Crikey’s dragonfly muse gallery
“I would rather lose my marbles than my mojo.” 😎
— Crikey, the hardest-working goon quoll in Moonbow
Write Like a Dragonfly gallery
View more dragonfly photos and various other images by visiting the author’s Flickr site:
Escape to the Bughouse
Learn even less about taglines, dragonflies, brains, entomology, Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightnings, and other stuff by contacting:
Crikey
Goon Quoll
Keynote Character in Moonbow
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