From time to time, the email addresses of matthewgood.org authors get spammed. This was waiting for me this morning in my inbox…

Just a little site update for registered users. We have amended the backend of the website so that you are now unable to alter the email address that you initially sign up with. Our reason for doing so has to do with individuals posting links to hate blogs in the comments who have changed their email addresses so that they cannot be contacted or identified.

For those users who legitimately would like to change their e-mail address associated with this site, send us an e-mail to discussion@matthewgood.org from the e-mail address you’d like to change your account to, and make sure to include both your matthewgood.org username and password for verification. We’ll update your account and notify you at the new address when the change in complete.

My thoughts today are with my best friend Rod, whose father, Ray, seems to have taken a turn for the worse last night. As I am updated as to what’s happening I will pass along information, but please feel free to contact Rod and send him and his family your best wishes. This year has been incredibly difficult for his family as not only is his father in a bad way, but his mother was also diagnosed with cancer several months ago.

Furthermore, our website’s chief executive, Dale Mugford, has also had a rather rough week. His mother recently underwent an operation to slow the spread of a cancerous tumor on her brain. I’d like to also urge readers to drop Dale a line of support as well.

Under such circumstances, you can’t imagine what kind words can mean to those watching family members suffer from life threatening illnesses. I know that the emails that Rod recently received meant not only a great deal to him, but to his father as well, who was made aware of them.

For those of you out there experiencing similar situations, everyone here at matthewgood.org passes along our best wishes to you and your families during such difficult times.

Last night I sat down and tried to make a list of everything that I can perform acoustically in the context of a live show. There are, unfortunately, some songs that I wish I could do but simply don’t translate all that well, such as Weapon. There are also a host of songs that I simply can’t remember or that, like Fearless, were penned using an old open tuning capo that I ordered from Nashville years ago that are no longer made. Were I to attempt to tune it properly, it would require me to tune middle strings up so high that they would probably break, so that’s out I’m afraid. I know a lot of people want to hear that song. And even though it’s not one of my favorites, I did try to figure away around the problem. It’s just that it doesn’t sound right to me, so.

Anyway, here’s the list I compiled…

1. Avalanche
2. Prime Time Deliverance
3. In A World Called Catastrophe
4. Apparitions
5. Strange Days
6. Load Me Up
7. Metal Airplanes
8. 99% Of Us Is Failure
9. Born Losers
10. Odette
11. Black Helicopter
12. The Boy Come Home
13. Moon Over Marin (Dead Kennedys cover)
14. I Am Not Safer Than A Bank
15. I’m A Window
16. She’s in It For The Money
17. True Love Will Find You In The End
18. Girl In The War (Josh Ritter cover)
19. Tripoli
20. Generation X-Wing
21. Advertising On Police Cars
22. Alert Status Red
23. It’s Been A While Since I Was Your Man
24. Fated
25. The Fine Art Of Falling Apart
26. House Of Smoke And Mirrors
27. Sort Of A Protest Song
28. Empty Road
29. Blue Skies Over Bad Lands
30. Champions Of Nothing
31. If I Was A Tidal Wave
32. Can’t Get Shot In The Back If You Don’t Run
33. Ex-Pats Of The Blue Mountain Symphony Orchestra
34. Hopeless
35. Buffalo Seven
36. Symbolistic White Walls
37. In Love With A Bad Idea
38. Life Beyond The Minimum Safe Distance
39. The Bright End Of Nowhere
40. Hurt (Nine Inch Nails cover)
41. So Long Mrs. Smith
42. Oh Be Joyful
43. Keira-Anne
44. A Long Way Down
45. Indestructible
46. Born To Kill

Like Carmelina, Truffle Pigs presents a challenge in that it’s drop tuned to a c#, which on an acoustic is very difficult to keep in tune. That would be why, when I started playing Carmelina as a solo artist I changed up the presentation so that drop tuning wouldn’t be required. Truffle Pigs, on the other hand, loses something very important when it isn’t in its original tuning, so I might work on having my Guild set up just for that song alone, which we did for The Fine Art Of Falling Apart last year as it’s in the same tuning, though played in a much more reserved manner and thus tends not to go out of tune so easily (though during last year’s tour it commonly did every night, which is why I rarely bothered attempting Truffle Pigs).

There may also be some new material performed above and beyond the material on Hospital Music as well, it all depends on what I write in the meantime. I have, since being here, already completed a song, and in the months that follow there’s a good chance I’ll write more. Don’t hold me to that, of course, I could spend the next five months sitting on my hands, one can never tell.

Birthday Suit

What is indecency? For those of you that have been fortunate enough to view some of the world’s most renowned art, you’ll know that the human form has been celebrated for millennia, be it through sculpture, paint, or photography.

I have always found it very bizarre that our society has problems with the human form in its natural state. Nudity is often viewed as vulgar, which is strange being that beneath our clothes we’re all pretty much the same.

Lately, because of a few photographs that I was sent and asked to mess around with in photoshop, I have received a fair number of emails from others asking me to do similar processing. I just wanted to say that I’m open to the idea, but I’m not willing to spend time doing it to pictures of your cat, your car, your guitar, or you and your friends partying. If you have something artistic with which I can work, I’m open to working on it. If you’re interested, you can send them to matt@matthewgood.org and I’ll take a look and see if I think something interesting can be created. So far I have primarily been sent modeling shots and asked to obscure them in a way that allows them to be seen as something more than nudity, but rather an expression. I am not limited to doing just that, mind you, but as I said, pictures of your cat don’t really interest me.

I woke up this morning to an utterly overwhelming amount of email to which I am unsure how to respond. I can promise you that when I get the time to sit down and respond to all of them I will, and that may take some time so please excuse me if they’re simple one liners or just a thanks.

One particular email that I’d like to quote is rather representative of a lot of the emails I received. It’s from Jeff in Stoney Creek, Ontario…

“Hey Matt. I just wanted to say that you personally have made a big difference in my life. About a year or so ago, I sent you a quick email asking you for advice about panic attacks/anxiety. The reason I asked you is because I had read on your website on a few occasions that you had suffered from one or the other at some point in your life. You responded back and urged me to see a Doctor. I probably would have never seen my Doctor if it had not of been for you, because I didn’t want people to think I was crazy. I probably would have just kept living with anxiety and panic attacks. I have since seen my Doctor and I am on medication for Anxiety. No more panic attacks and no more senseless worrying at all hours of the day. For that I have you to thank.â€?

To such things I don’t know what to say. It seems to me that any decent person would give such advice to someone with such troubles, but being that I have suffered the ignorance of others and the fear that comes with trying to tell other people about anxiety and depression, the majority of times having been met with ridicule and consternation (even by those closest to me, even by those promised to stand beside me through such trials), I’m glad that Jeff ended up getting help because I responded.

I’m going to take the next few days to respond to these emails and think about what I’m going to do with regards to the blog. It seems to mean a lot to a great many people, so I’ll spend some time thinking about it. Thank you all for your kind words of support. I have a feeling I might actually even sleep on the flight home today.

Oh, and just because it wouldn’t be me to not mention at least a few things. Juan Cole’s recent Salon piece on the execution of Saddam Hussein is a must read…

“The body of Saddam, as it swung from the gallows at 6 a.m. Saturday Baghdad time, cast an ominous shadow over Iraq. The execution provoked intense questions about whether his trial was fair and about what the fallout will be. One thing is certain: The trial and execution of Saddam were about revenge, not justice. Instead of promoting national reconciliation, this act of revenge helped Saddam portray himself one last time as a symbol of Sunni Arab resistance, and became one more incitement to sectarian warfare.

Saddam Hussein was tried under the shadow of a foreign military occupation, by a government full of his personal enemies. The first judge, an ethnic Kurd, resigned because of government interference in the trial; the judge who took his place was also Kurdish and had grievances against the accused. Three of Saddam’s defense lawyers were shot down in cold blood. The surviving members of his defense team went on strike to protest the lack of protection afforded them. The court then appointed new lawyers who had no expertise in international law. Most of the witnesses against Saddam gave hearsay evidence. The trial ground slowly but certainly toward the inevitable death verdict.â€?

Events unfolding in Somalia are also of import. From Eric Margolis…

“Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia under cover of the Christmas holiday was a blatant aggression that is likely to widen the arc of conflict across the dangerously turbulent Horn of Africa. It also marks the opening of a new front in Washington’s war against Islamic militants and reformers.

Claims by Ethiopia that Somalia, a nation without any real military forces, threatened its border were as fanciful as assertions by Washington and Addis Ababa that the so-called “transitional government” they had installed in the town of Baidoa represented anything more than its own well-paid members.

The US-backed and financed Ethiopian offensive was clearly designed to crush the first stable government strife-torn Somalia has had in 15 years of civil war and anarchy. The new Islamic regime, known as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), recently managed to bring law and order to much of southern and central Somalia. In the north, a secessionist group has proclaimed something called independent “Puntland.”

The Union of Islamic Courts ended Somalia’s long civil war by crushing local warlords who were being armed and financed by the CIA. The US claims the Islamic Courts is a second Taliban-style movement containing “terrorists” involved in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa who will turn Somalia into a hotbed of anti-American subversion. The UIC denies these allegations.

More important, under the Bush/Cheney Administration, any movement that has the audacity to call itself “Islamic” immediately becomes a target of American hostility. The embarrassing total defeat of US-backed Somali warlords by the Islamic Courts militia led directly to Washington’s decision to press Ethiopia to invade Somalia.

Ethiopia has one of Africa’s more powerful, well-trained armed forces with over 1,300 tanks and a modern air force that are now increasingly equipped and aided by the United States.�