An excellent story made the rounds of Facebook today. The story basically confirmed what I said yesterday, that summer and Festa season drives the Maltese to a temporary collective episode of insanity. Basically, some idiot who’s got money to burn placed a €10,500 bid for the honour of carrying the 450-kilogramme statue of Our Lady of the Assumption during the festa procession in Mġarr. Now, I don’t regularly spend in the 5 figures to lift stuff, but if I had that liberty, here are the 5 Things I Would Lift With €10,500.

1: Weights

If you really are into lifting things and forking out money for it, you should purchase that which is meant to be lifted; weights. You can get 5.4 tonnes of weights from Amazon.co.uk for £9,183.15, which converts to €10,500. You know, if you wanted to be really fit and hone your muscle.

2: A Car

You could buy a car with €10,500, certainly you could! How do you think so many BMWs are doing the rounds today, becoming even more popular than Ford Escorts and Toyota Vitz (Vitzs, Vitzes, whatever)? Fair deal, you won’t get as much weight as by buying weights, but if you’re looking to impress, lifting a 3 Series clean off the ground is bound to get you some kudos. Hernia even.

3: Lots of Shopping

When I do my shopping, and I’m not exactly a weakling myself, the shopping bags still feel like they weigh a bleeding ton. Not literally of course. And that’s for around €100. Imagine the mass you can muster for €10,500. You could organize a bloody street party/fenkata/open bar for the fester with that money. On second thoughts, don’t you noisy gits.

4: Chicks

Sure you could lift some chicks up for €10,500. I bet you I could you find you exactly 210 chicks to lift for that kind of money, giving them €50 each. If you wanted to go a tad more high class, I’ll take you to a strip joint, where I’m sure they’ll ‘field your most unusual request with the most discretion possible’, though your cost per chick will climb slightly.

5: Books

If you’re truly a lost soul and seek only to expand your cortex, for pleasure and to try and understand matters of the cosmos and what not, perhaps what you truly need to do is lift books. For example, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos in paperback format weighs 8 ounces, which is 0.226796185 kilos. It costs 8 dollars from Amazon US. Assuming that book as the template for all books possible in the universe, that would mean that for your money (€10,500) you can get 1,888 books, which would weigh 428.3 kilos and leave you a fair bit more intelligent than the ignorant lump of carbon with no idea of the value of money you started out as.