I was unsure whether to post this here or iwank, but I posted twice, once to LOL and once to say, "Dude, you're being really annoying", so I figure it might go better here. Right.

WTF_Nature is a super fun community on LJ devoted to the crazy shit nature comes up with. Freak storms. Animals we didn't know existed. Animals that do exist but mutate. If it's in nature, and it makes you go "WTF", it's in the comm.

Yesterday, writerspleasure decided to post about a species of goby in South African waters that has turned on its natural predator, the jellyfish, and made those squishy suckers into their dinner. A really interesting subject, full of fascinating ramifications for the local ecosystem in that area. For some reason, he brought in an Ayn Rand reference.

markslj is tired of this political bullshit.

Wank is soon in the waters once the first blood is shed.

pazi_ashfeather makes a comment on writerspleasure's behaviour.

Thing degenerate and get mighty personal after that, all while the both of them argue about Ayn Rand. I don't know why, but people arguing about Ayn Rand always makes me laugh.

So anyway, one minute you think it's over, but those crazy kids start up the argument again in another thread. Are the Bearded Gobys Libertarians or Bolsheviks? A question for the ages!

Ahhh... Ayn Rand. *chuckle* Tiny, to be sure, but like the Bearded Goby, kind of cute as well.

Over on Best Week Ever (a blog of the VH1 show of the same name that I discovered while clicking around on Steve Colbert's site) I found this highly fascinating account of Eric Nies stripping himself bare to save his dog from an icy lake. Nies is, apparently, the "hot guy from the Grind" if you were wondering.

WELL! There are very few comments but it seems like every one of them is a misspelled slap at people who are misspelling their comments.

Smashley sez: @ @ EL G: Technically it would be: “THESE ARE the type of people who also read this blog and comment.” You are referring to two seperate people who made mistakes in their comments. And you know the old saying, “people who live in glass houses…” I wouldn’t criticize others without at least proofreading my own comment. (I really hope I didn’t make a grammatical mistake in this comment…)

There's also some conjecture as to WHY IS HE NAKED as well as a fan who is a little too defensive of the guy's career. Ah, chilly willy, I was amused all around.

Ah, infant formula wank. No, not the infant formula scandal. I mean the equation for surefire wank on Cute Overload:
human child in picture = OMG NOT CUTE EVIL STUPID BAYBEE
It's a pretty simple formula, but the results here are deliciously tainted with melamine.

It's another Asian infant chomping on a puppy. Racewank is happily avoided for the most part, though, so you can relax.

I can't go through all 256 comments right now, but here's a few skimmed off the top:

This one is probably a joke: Who will end up with the personality complex? The baby who didn't know any better and must eat puppy faces or the puppy who will forever need to be inside someone's mouth!

Well, thanks for justifying this with your ovaries: While I am female, I do NOT think babies are cute - unless they have fur and tails. The furless ones just grow up to hate you anyway.

According to my breastfeeding friends, it's a lot more than that: Babies sorta suck sometimes.

This is your chance for internet glory: Last I looked, CuteButNotBabiesOverload.com did not exist.

It's our responsibility as intarweb police!: Enough with the pudding comments. When the picture is obviously this disturbing, people have a right and a duty to comment on just how awful it is.

And here's the thread on the LJ feed. First comment is "in before wank". But we do have this lovely poem:
it is not cute
and it is not ok
the puppy is probably hurting
picture the cutest monkey holding your baby by the head
and then someone even bigger thaking a picture of it
the monkey doesn't know the baby is hurting
but it doesn't make it ok

And, for the sake of sanity:
But, for the hell of all you people who think that baby is messed up in the head, lets beat the hell out of the baby for doing what she knows to do, which is...

Item
Item=Mouth

Edit: CO now has more than one poster and the poster of the above was actually "Not That Mike the Other Mike." Not to be outdone, Meg has upped the stakes by posting an image of adult human women. And filed them under "primates." Ahahahahahahaha. I <3 you Meg. (Wank, natch.)

More taxonomy wank, plz. Thanks to exit_chrysalis for linking us. (There's also people talking about BSG, Torchwood and Firefly in the comments; the wank streams have crossed!)

So, there's a country singer named Kelly Foxton who likes to dress up her pet squirrel in little outfits. Lots and lots of little outfits.

Now, Sugar Bush is no ordinary squirrel. She is a patriotic squirrel! Many of the pictures on the site are bizarrely militaristic, and frankly, just a liiiittle creepy. Here, for example, Sugar Bush inspects the gallows in preparation for Saddam Hussein's assassination.

The fun begins when the Sugar Bush Squirrel (TM!) page gets linked on Cute Overload.

fifi sums up the whole bizarre situation best:

the thing about the politics is...
really, what political message is sent by dressing up your squirrel in military garb?

It borders on the parodic, or the surreal.
Too aesthetically bizarre to be deemed mere partisanship--regardless of the conscious intentions of the artist.

It's a rodent-folk-art version of Cindy Sherman!

Not those boobies: the blue-footed variety. wtf_nature is at it again after someone posts a picture of a blue-footed booby along with this:

First Post!
Look! It gots blue feet!
And then I ask myself what if any is the need for blue feets?

The general sentiment is that blue-footed boobies were only wtf back in third grade, and members start claiming spotlight killed the community, calling for mod intervention, and pointing out that the post breaks the rules by not including info. (This isn't everything. Look for bursts all over the comments.)

There is some dissent, but it's not until gravitys_enemy chimes in with this that it gets truly wanky:

Ok look, I realize this person posted what has been called a repeat. I think we've all established that. Also the person should have said more about the picture than they did.... that all being said, no need to be quite so rude. Some of us are new. I didn't see the picture before, and I didn't mind seeing it, so thank you poster for posting it. I understand if we want to make a think over the fact it's a repost... but one, two, even ten comments get the job done.

Disgruntled wtf-ers take that about as well as you'd expect. Don't miss the bonus flounce and respost wank.

ETA: the comm is exploding all over the place today. (Failure to get sarcasm in that last link is pretty spectacular.)

ETA2: Boobies = deleted. ETA1 links still work, though.

ETA3: It continues.

Being sarcastic to the newbies and dropping the f-bomb all over the place sure looks like trolling to me. (Emphasis on "to me.") No, I'm not a mod, but I've got children, and I don't tolerate potty mouth or disrespect from them or from strangers like you.

Over on wtf_nature on LJ, someone posts a picture of a hermit crab in a transparent shell. It's kind of cool and freaky all at once.

electricube is bothered by this. Very bothered. Se proceeds to wank about animal rights, toxic poison, and what bettas really need for an environment. In great and astonishing length.

But wait, there's more! Bettas are awesome and you can teach them how to read. Watch as sarcasm completely escapes this girl, and then her boyfriend leaps in to defend her!

At least read that last link. It is fucking beautiful. Edit: There's a NSFW link in one of those threads I didn't follow to the end.

Thanks so much to the anonymouse over on wank_report who tipped me off to all the crazy.

Cute Overload, in addition to being full of cute animals, is often also full of wank. Most posts contain at least one accusation of animal cruelty, and this one, about a Scottish Fold cat with exceptionally stubby legs, is no exception.

Comments about animal breeding begin on the very first comment and only continue down the thread.

Adopt a shelter cat!

This sucks. Animal-cruelty is what it is.

CAPSLOCK OF EMPHASIS!

None of us would advocate breaking puppies' legs just because they can look really cute in casts.

I don't know about you, but I plan to go break some puppy legs later this afternoon!