I thought this guy was unbelievably hot, although I can't remember his name. Who am I kidding, I never knew his name. He was Icelandic, so I can only assume his name was like a hundred letters long, and half of those letters are probably Js. That's what they do in Iceland, they take a normal sized English word and then pepper it so heavily with Js and other letters we don't have until suddenly it's a big, bloated monster-word that you can abandon all hope of trying to pronounce.

At first glance, the fact that Icelandic shares several letters in common with English makes it look deceptively familiar, accessible even, and I honestly thought that I was going to go over to their country and somehow pick it up. Even though I had read repeatedly that it was one of the most difficult languages in the entire world to learn, in the back of my mind I still kind of thought, "I'll prove them wrong, how difficult can it be?"

It turns out, very. I should clarify that when I say I hoped to "pick it up," I mean that I intended to take their language and mangle it into something I could, at the very least, use in order to refer to various places and objects while on my trip, the way I do in MOST OTHER COUNTRIES. This didn't happen.

Instead, when I see an Icelandic word, my brain sort of glazes over. I find myself in a kind of waking paralysis. The words are so long, that even when trying to take them in little sections and sound them out, I found myself having to take little breaks and rest, the way you might on an overlong staircase. "I'll just stop here for a bit and catch my breath," I might think, halfway through one of their overlong words. "Yall go on without me, I'll meet back up with you at... F*ck! I can't pronounce the name of where I'll meet you either...!"

Trying to pronounce the names of the various locations and places we wanted to go in Iceland proved so difficult that, I kid you not, rather than continuing to try and learn their impossible language, we found it easier to just create our own, new language, alongside of it. Before you say that this sounds absurd, maybe even lazy, and certainly an extreme length to go to, all to avoid simply hunkering down and learning their language, let me put it in perspective for you: how do you text your friend the name of a place, when you don't have half of those characters readily available on your phone's little alphanumeric keyboard?

You can't, and so what ends up happening is you create approximations of their words, based on what you can text and what you can pronounce. I have so many fond memories of staying on Mayonnaise Jar Island, for example, because that is what we called the small island off the southwest coast of Iceland so many times that I have no idea to this day what it was really called. To me it will always be Mayonnaise Jar Island. I reckon it must have started with an M, the same way I know the little Icelandic town we ended up referring to as Sassafras must have started with an S. The one and only exception to this -- and the only Icelandic word that I still know to this day -- is the word foss, which is somehow the translation of our large, compound word WATERFALL. So we called a foss a foss.

Icy Hot is what I’m calling the dreamboat of a man that was the captain of our speedboat. He was like a modern day Viking to me, and I found him so incredibly sexy. Of course most of the time I had no idea what he was saying, but I sure wouldn’t mind shoving some extra Js in his overlong Icelandic words, if you know what I mean…

If you don’t think he’s hot yet, wait until this tall glass of water attempts to sexily take a provocative, but complicated, drink of water from an iceberg chunk.

Sexy, yeah? Well, I don’t want to ruin it for you, but this whole spectacle turned decidedly less sexy moments later when this hunk with the chunk began frantically licking the ice in such a weird way that it instantly reminded me of a caged gerbil suckling from one of those little water tubes. I think a lot of it had to do with the above-angle he was holding it? Other than gerbils and Guinea pigs, there’s just not a lot of instances where you see a creature drinking water from above them, right? It’s upsetting.

Unless over here in Iceland they are used to drinking water from a waterfall, a FOSS—- Oh my god!

Could that be the etymology of the English word FAUCET??? Omg! Am I on to something here???

I don’t know where I was going with this, but when Icy Hot was done with his sexy gerbil routine, I asked him if he would pass the ice chunk so I could have a taste, and in his thick Icelandic accent he communicated that surely I wouldn’t want it after he’d slurped around on it…. At which point I’m thinking, uh, YEAH I DO! Do you have a mirror? Or a reflective glacier surface at least? Have you seen you?? I’ll take it! Pass it here!

Plus, I just watched you fish it out of the water so it’s probably covered in fish pee or whatever, but hey. What happens on Mayonnaise Jar Island stays on Mayonnaise Jar Island, am I right, Bro?!

Let’s take that condom right out of condiment, if you know what I mean…

What’s that? You wish I’d stop hitting on you and my sexual innuendos are confusing? Well you have no room to talk, your entire language is confusing and sounds like choking.

Just bring that huge piece of ice over here, you big stud. Stop holding it above me though, I don’t want to do the lick-y gerbil thing, I’ll lick it in my lap like a civilized person.

You can read more about a GLACIER IN FRANCE I have no recollection of visiting, or you can read about another glacier in Iceland that LOOKS LIKE A PENIS.