It’s hard to believe that it’s been 12 weeks already and my tenure here as Rosetta Stone’s most compulsively foul-mouthed blogger is coming to an end. This has truly been one of the best experiences of my professional life (not counting the time when I got drunk with David Cross at South by Southwest, or the time we were on this huge traveling festival in Australia with Metallica and my tour manager and I tracked down Ghost without their disguises, or those three days where my band was stuck in Kitaning, PA because our van dropped its transmission and all we had was three beers, a loaf of Wonder Bread, and some sleeping bags to our names, and we had to sleep in a field that wild dogs liked to party in . . . ah . . . good times, indeed). But I’m getting off topic here already. Forgive me.

Here we are in week eleven of this journey and I’m supposed to be getting a tutor to help further my pursuit of learning Italian. As my wonderful tenure as one of the only bloggers here at Rosetta Stone to use phrases like “slapdick” and “asseyes” nears its end, I’m trying to crank it up a notch or two, and a tutor seems like a good way to crank said notch. But here’s the funny part: I harbor a little bit of fear when it comes to getting a tutor. It’s probably the same fear I harbor regarding going to the doctor, which is to say: totally irrational and actively self-sabotaging.

My wife is going to Saudi Arabia day after tomorrow, and it’s weird, the most terrifying thing to me is that I don’t know what’s up there at all. I’ve heard stories where if the powers that be feel like you’re out of line, you’re screwed, regardless of the rule of law? But honestly, I simply just don’t know much about what goes on over there at all, besides stories that are sensational enough to make the news. Beyond the fact that booze is illegal there and that things ended badly for at least one dissenting journalist, my guess is as good as your Fox-News-watching grandpa’s, if I’m really being honest.