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Gorilla snot? 

I light lighter picks for strumming.  I still drop them or slip sometimes, but just keep playing anyway.  It's just something that comes in time.

Me too, but I'm 42.

You're too young will,  but something I tell my audiences is that the more they drink, the better I sound.  So I only play for kids (who don't care how you sound so long as you're singing silly songs) or where there are adult beverages readily available. 

-Zurf

Use a monitor if possible.  You sound in tune to you because you hear you through your jaw.  However, others hear you through the air and tympanic membrane.  So, if you begin to hear yourself through vibrations in the air rather than vibrations in your jaw, you just may be able to adjust your pitch to sound better.

- Zurf

The only exercise I can recommend is to do the chord changes a lot.  What I did is to pick out a couple songs I wanted to learn and printed chord charts for them.  Then I wrote down on a piece of paper every chord change:

G to A
A to D
D to G

Like that. 

Then I practiced each chord change twenty times in a row and practice the next one twenty times.  When I had practiced each chord change 100 times each night, I tried to play the song slowly, putting the chord changes into context in the song.  Just quarter note steady strums, nothing fancy.  Try and maintain good steady rhythm 1,2,3,4 while doing the chord changes.  It took a few weeks of it, practicing each chord change 100 times each night, and then practicing the song with a steady rhythm for as long as I felt like I was making progress.  And then it was ingrained.  By doing this, I ended up practicing each change thousands of times in just a couple weeks and it really got the muscle memory solidly into my fingers. 

Note that I am teaching myself, and that this method worked for me.  I'm not representing it as working for everyone, or as being the best way to learn.  I'm just tossing it out there for consideration and saying it helped ME to learn.  Your mileage may vary.

- Zurf

Hard to say.  Murder seems unlikely to me.  The lyrics of some of the songs demonstrated an understanding of depression, if not the words of a depressed person.  Add booze and drugs to depression, and it's not too hard to believe.  It happens every day in every city.  If he was in constant pain, that's another one.  Doc can probably give some better statistics, but I've heard that there's something like an 80% suicide rate for people experiencing pain greater than a "grade 7" pain on a daily basis within a two year period of the onset.  I don't know.  It just doesn't seem all that unlikely to me that he'd kill himself.  I've known others who seemed to have everything going for them that didn't have an opinion of themselves that matched the opinions others seemed to have.  I don't know how big the guy was, but I know from personal experience that it is possible for some people (or at least one I knew) to pull the trigger of a shotgun with the barrel in his mouth. 

- Zurf

Just do it.  Sorry I'm not much help, but you just have to do it to be able to do it.  For me, the strumming/picking and the lyrics work off of one another and keep me focused on what's coming up.  I think maybe the best thing is to pick songs you know really, really well.  Someone above said to be able to sing a song and play a song separately and bring them together.  Perhaps that is what I've done subconsciously by picking songs to play on guitar that I've been singing for years. 

Good luck.  If it were effortless, it wouldn't be fun when we get it right (or almost right anyway). 

- Zurf

Well, I haven't been playing for years, but I have done a bit of experimenting with strings.  If I were to play mediums, my guitar would be far too loud for me to be heard singing.  Some may think that's a good thing.  Many, in fact.  Nevertheless, I prefer light strings for that reason.  Also, my guitar came set up for ultra-lights, so even using lights requires me to take it back for a set-up, which I don't feel like doing.  Not that it's a bad thing to do, I just don't feel like doing it.  To use mediums renders the guitar almost unplayable (but it would be fine if it were set up, but we've already been down that road). 

- Zurf

Um maybe.  I'm going to be sitting around stoned and bored for a couple weeks soon.  (legally stoned - I'm having some surgery that is expected to be painful, so I'm hoping for some good drugs)

Anyway, I can't make a long term commitment, but I may be able to help a bit after the second of the month.  Feel free to send an e-mail and let me know what it'll take.  I usually just pop on for a few minutes from time to time between meetings, but with being out of work for a couple weeks and not able to do much more than stare blankly into space, checking out a cool music website sounds like a lot more fun.

- Zurf

LONG LIVE THE MUTANTS!!!

Don't you dare write a song without a B chord on my behalf.  Your songs are much too special to go mucking about with them for the likes of me.  Give me some time, I'll get the B chord some day and then I'll have a whole plethora of Russell Harding songs to call upon. 

- Zurf