I'm Melting! What a world . . .

*sigh*
I take another sip of my stein full of coffee and look at the blinking cursor in front of me.
  "The word of the day is: Spent."
  "Spent /spent/," says Dictionary, "v. 1. used up or exhausted. 2. A terrible word of the day."
  "A terrible . . . Dictionary, cut me some slack."
Dictionary grumbles under his covers.
"Well what do you expect? I'm buggered. It's so damn hot . . ." I say, turning to my window, which exudes the heat of the day outside, and resounds with the chitters of the thousand or so cicadas. A sonata that I have always associated with the Australian heat.
  "What else is there? The only real news is that Utah thing, and I can't talk about that again. And there's not much else happening in my life."
  "Skyfall /'skuyfawl/ n. 1. a 2012 movie starring James Bond."
  "This isn't a review site, Dick. Besides, you want a review of Skyfall? It's better than the last one. If you haven't seen it yet, do something about that."
The ancient tomes pages burble a moment in thought.
  " . . . Inspiration?"
  "Hmm? What's so inspiring?"
  "/inspə'rayshən/ n. 1. an inspiring action or influence, person or thing, as a divine influence brought to bear on a person."
  "Yeah, yeah. What's your inspiration?"
Dictionary sighs, exasperated.
  "WORD!"
  "Word . . . Word of the day?" I lean back in my chair, "Inspiration . . ."
  "Inspire," continues Dictionary, "/in'spuyə/ v. 1. to impart an enlivening, quickening, or exalting influence."
  "Inspiration . . ." I mutter again, superfluously . . .

>>Y'know, I read somewhere once that the most popular blogs are 'link blogs'. At least, I think that's the term they use. I can't recall the term. But what it means is: The most popular blogs are the ones that link to other websites.
I was looking this up when I was wondering how to expand my audience. And not long after reading it, I decided that I was not going to do it. Why? Because it's lazy. It's the same problem I have with fanfiction (which is a term I plan on using in a later blog post [here 'blog post' should be read as 'rant]).
Which is that, rather than create one's own ideas and explain through them and get folks to enjoy them for their own merit, you cheat and take someone else's idea and say "Eh, look at that. Woo . . ." and expect people to be impressed by your abilities with a  Google Search Engine.
But that being said, I still wouldn't mind mentioning those other sites of text-based media that i truly appreciate.
The word of the day is: 'INSPIRATION'.

I want to first say that here I am using the term in a very abstract sense. I mean, if I was TRULY inspired by these people, then I would attempt to ape their style. But I don't do that. Rather, I mean they inspired me to believe that people aren't too stupid to read 1,000 words without getting bored. And in fact that some people enjoy such a thing.
Also, I don't consider them my heroes. I don't believe in heroes (a notion I apparently share with a selection of super-villains), but none-the-less there are folks that do amazing things, even on the internet. And for me, this is they:

 - Daniel O'Brien:
Cracked.com, which is apparently America's only humour site, has a variety of writers for their articles. My favourite of which is Daniel O'Brien. Now, you may wonder, why of them all the cracked writers do I prefer O'Brien? Well, I like David Wong's style, Adam Todd Brown following close behind, and Gladstone does alright. But Gladstone's work descends into masturbation/self-flagellation; Brown is better as a character piece and, well, Wong crawled up his own ass ever since he wrote a novel. But what D.O.B. does different (to me) is that he's a dweeb. He spends most of his time writing the articles the way that I like to read them. The weird facts amongst weird comedy, (i.e. the same way that they accept user submissions). Whereas the others, Soren Bowie in particular, just talk about themselves, and/or nonsense. It's the same thing that the Cracked Writer's Workshop tells you NOT to do, goddamn hypocrites. And sure, O'Brien does this occasionally, but that is the exception to the rule. You should read some of his stuff.

 - Benjamin 'Yahtzee' Croshaw:
Now if you know this guy, I know what you're thinking "What? he doesn't write online!" Well, wake-up sonny-britches. Before Yahtzee started the Zero Punctuation feature on The Escapist's website, he had an online journal at fullyramblomatic.com, but I don't need to mention that because he doesn't update that so often. No, rather I like his Extra Punctuation feature, wherein he talks a little more about his game review of the week and/or whatever is more interesting than the game of the week [the latter occuring more frequently than the former, in my experience]. I like it because he gets to be less 'funny' and more informative, yet still with his trademark potty-mouth that makes me giggle, because I am mentally four years old. And also, as he is a fellow Australian, I feel the need to promote my countrymen. Check it out if you like obscure metaphors in the like of Top Gear.

 - Robert 'Moviebob' Chipman
if you'v heard of him, you've officially been spending too much time on the internet. I first found Moviebob through his 'The Game Overthinker' segment on Youtube, which moved to a dedicated website by it's own merit, and finally Screwattack.com, but when he joined The Escapist to be their resident film critic for Escape to the Movies, he also gained his own column: Intermission. Here he often takes the time to talk about the stuff in between films, like actors, directors, old movies, and movie/internet culture. I like Moviebob because I always feel like I'm learning something; but perhaps that's because of his pitch perfect American Radio voice (which is admittedly just a put-on. But still . . .) he's definitely, DEFINITELY worth a look-in if you like retro games, or believe that gaming isn't just a child's hobby.

 - Randall Munroe:
Despite having a name that, as a writer, I would love to give to a villain (I'm thinking somneone who owns an oil-drilling company . . .), Mr Munroe is not only a nice guy, but the writer/drawer/creator behind xkcd, to be found at xkcd.com, a stick-figure webcomic about romance, sarcasm, math, and language [sic]. But why can I talk about him in this abitrary list of internet writers? Well, because he, (at time of writing) somewhat recently created the What if? feature. Wherein, every Tuesday, he answers user-submitted (often highly unrealistic) questions using the hard, cold logic of physics, but lightening it up with his sarcasm and sense of humour.
If you haven't read this, or even heard of his work. Then do so. Don't worry, I'll wait. I'm serious, do it now.

 - Troy Steele:
Have you ever read a Goosebumps book? One of the series of 62 children's horror novellas, by R.L. Stine? Well Mr Steele has. In fact, he's read all of them. Of course, despite how popular the series was, you realize in retrospect that they're really kinda dumb. Steele presents this, as well as his oft-mentioned fondness and nostalgia for the series throughout his website: Blogger Beware, where he reviews all of the books of the series, even going into the 2000 series and now (whilst, at time of writing, he is on a seemingly endless hiatus) he has begun the new 2008 series, Goosebumps: Horrorland. And all of his reviews are interspersed with his trademark, esoteric pop culture/pop trivia jokes.
If you ever read Goosebumps, you should read this.
If you never read Goosebumps, you should read this.
If you don't like empty choices, well now you have to read this.

I lean back in my chair and look at my work,
  "Wow, that's probably more than a thousand words. I've hit my quota."
  "Picture, /'pikchə/!" says dictionary, " n. 1. A representation or image made upon a surface, usually flat: What kind of picture will you draw for the post?"
  " . . . shit, I dunno . . . how's about a lightbulb?"

He said, "let there be lightbulb."
And lo there was a lightbulb.