Auditory Misery is a Goldmine.

I’m all the time singing. At the house, in the car, at Winn-Dixie, Bud’s, wherever. Chances are, if I’m awake, I have a song stuck in my head and I want to share it with my friends. And I have an ethereal voice. Pajama-clad, dive-bar karaoke hags have told me this on numerous occasions. It’s an awe-inspiring treat when you’re around to hear me belting out a little ditty.

Beneficially, Matt doesn’t seem to think so. One Saturday afternoon, returning from some beer-errand or something, I started singing “Kiss From a Rose” by Seal in Matt’s car. He told me to please stop, that he’d actually pay me to stop. Naturally, I kept going just to see if he would. And wouldn’t you know it, it was so damn miserable to him that I ended up being paid to stem my incessant crooning.

Now, for the record, I must tell you that when I say “paid”, I don’t mean in cold-hard cash. Monetary exchanges have never taken place in the proverbial “zipping of my lips”. Matt bribes me with other things, such as Early Times, Triscuits, Camel Lights and TV on DVDs. But anyway you look at it, it’s still getting goods and services for hardly any work, just something that I would be doing naturally. And, let’s face it: probably, those are the kinds of items I would be spending my “free” money on anyway.

My all-time number one moneymaker is “Friends”, by Ween, but here are a few others that have proven profitable in the past:

• “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley
• “My Baby” by Mariah Carey
• That “Show Me The Way to Go Home” song from Jaws
• “I Don’t Know Much, But I Know I Love You” by Aaron Neville
• “Mother” by Danzig
• “I Keep Forgetting” by Michael McDonald
• “Muscle ‘N Flo” by Menomena
• “One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer” by George Thorogood and The Destroyers
• “Ave Satani” by Fantomas
• “Since U Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson