Cute Things Falling Asleep

OMG, y'all, look at the puppies! They are sooo cute! And kittens! And ponies and bear cubs and fluffy bunny rabbits and little yellow ducklings!

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The Puppycam may be over, but thankfully, the blog Cute Things Falling Asleep is still going strong. Want to see a baby chick pass out atop a slice of bread (yeah, we don't know why either)? A narcoleptic dachshund? How about a baby polar bear sleeping next to a plush, stuffed polar bear? Cute Things Falling Asleep might be the most adorable time waster since Animal Planet began hosting puppy sporting events.

As a comedy writer, Nick Malis (whose credits include Curb Your Enthusiasm and Mind of Mencia) has a lot of downtime. He began posting videos of sleepy cute things in 2006, but nobody really took notice until a month ago. More and more websites started linking to him, and then came the news outlets. "CNN called, and suddenly I found myself on Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," says Malis. "I was like, 'Do you realize there's a war going on?'" (See pictures of animals in love.)

Malis combs YouTube and other websites for videos, then rates the animals on cuteness and sleepiness scales from 1 to 5. The younger and fluffier the animal, and the harder it fights off slumber, the higher the rating. Some animals are at a disadvantage. In fact, he's never given anything the coveted 5 rating. "I would love to see a 5 animal," he says, "but I don't know what one would look like."

So does he ever get complaints? "I once rated a baby a 2, and the mother wrote me and said, 'I think my baby is more than a 2.' " Malis refused to change the rating. "My attitude is this: I didn't make your baby a 2 — you did. It just happens to be a 2. That's what it is; I'm sorry."

Low ratings aside, there's nothing on Cute Things Falling Asleep that isn't adorable. One visit and the site will have you cooing like a 12-year-old girl at a petting zoo.

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