Is this your dream job? Sitting on your sofa watching your favourite music videos, then quickly creating a video homage to them, and receiving adoration of fans all over the world whilst squeezing in interviews with journalists from the Wall Street Journal and television crews from American Network news?

It makes you wonder, why didn't I think of that? It can happen. Indeed it has happened for Dustin McLean, a 28 year old karaoke-loving Californian.

Dustin's short career path had previously seen him make a living from quite diverse jobs. At one stage he was a laser printer technician travelling around using his geeky technical skills to support a wide customer base complaining of paper jams and streaky printouts.

Another time he indulged his more creative talents, good enough to make a living as a musician (even though he's never had a music lesson in his life).

The contradictions of Dustin remind me of the website WillItBlend.com - which as its name suggests tests bizarre items for their blend-ability.

The inspiring story of how Dustin stumbled upon the dream job involves characters as diverse as politician and green campaigner Al Gore, comedian and Hollywood star Will Ferrell and musical imitator Weird Al Yankovic.

This time last year Dustin McLean picked decided to "muck around with a music video" as a distraction from his day job - a talented but almost anonymous animation artist working at Current TV (the cable television network led by former US Vice President Al Gore).

Animation projects can involve long and tedious days, weeks and months before the final product is ready to show to the world. Dustin wanted a break. Something that was creative, and musical, but quick.

His "A Ha" moment came when he finished a rework of "Take On Me" in a single night. It quickly became YouTube's most viewed video (at the time). Almost immediately and without any real promotional efforts the number of views jumped rapidly. At one stage it was averaging ten thousand views every half hour. Within two months well over two million people had seen the results of Dustin's mucking around.

Turns out Dustin had accidentally created a viral phenomenon. He coined the phrase that spawned a whole new genre of video, "literal video". A literal video takes existing video footage, strips out the audio and creates an audio track that just describes exactly what you see on screen. With the genius of Dustin, a meticulous mimic and natural comedian, the result is hilarious.

Dustin insists that it's all "easy". Easy for him, maybe. But you need to be able to blend proficiency in musicianship, singing, video editing, comedy, lyricist/copy writer, audio engineer, internet publishing, promoting ... and, as it turned out, a copyright lawyer.

In December, YouTube took down the videos. But it didn't stop others trying their hand at literal video. Unknown strangers from all over the world began posting "challenges to DustoMcNeato" to request their favourite loopy video receive attention from him.

Some other savvy (if not sinister) spectators started selling his lyrics and created commercial products that ranged from domain names to t-shirts and everything in between.

His advice for other artists is simple; "Before you publish, ask yourself 'what if this goes big?' then register the domains, create the merchandise and everything yourself before anyone else can".

Luckily the people behind FunnyOrDie.com, the comedy website founded by Will Ferrell amongst others, has now signed up Dustin on a contract to provide exclusive content to FunnyOrDie.com for a limited time, before wider release elsewhere on the net. In exchange FunnyOrDie.com help put some promotional muscle behind Dustin that has helped attract the attention of media outlets around the world.

Curiously, since Dustin appeared on international television explaining how cool YouTube helped him live his dream, they have quietly reinstated all his literal videos.

If only literal video was Dustin's dream job. Despite the popularity of his videos, he failed to capitalise on the enormous commercial potential of his adoring audience.

But it's not all bad news. He did earn a promotion at work from animation artist to assistant director and still works his day job at Current TV. His current project is a collaboration with Weird Al Yankovic. Dustin created animation to showcase Weird Al's parody portfolio (ironically including Dire Strait's 'Money for Nothing'), as well as a new release "Ringtone".

Dustin continues to experiment with a wide range of creative projects at his own website DustFilms.com . But what he really wants to do is live action video.

It's my guess that the live action video we eventually see from Dustin will be with a huge creative twist - once again clever enough to quickly capture a global audience yet simple enough to make us all wish we had the easy genius of Dustin McLean.