A French tourist has been ordered to pay a €1,000 ($1,200) fine after attempting to fly out of Sardinia with more than four pounds of local sand in his luggage.

The Italian island's idyllic white sand is protected, and tourists face fines and even jail time for removing it from local beaches.

The unnamed man was apprehended at Cagliari Elmas Airport on September 1 after he was found in possession of a bottle containing 4.4 pounds of sand.

Full story here.

Maybe I’m misreading my brand, but I feel like this take is NOT IT. I think my hatred for the Man is fairly well documented on this blog, but then again so is my hatred for the stupidity of, well, Man. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to this story, fine this guy to the moon. Fine him 50,000 dollars. He deserves it.

If you know what you’re doing is illegal, and then you get caught with four pounds of it, then you’re fucked. You can’t talk your way out of it, and I’m going to talk shit about you. It’s like that lady trying to take back gender reveals. It’s too late. You already did the bad thing. She created gender reveals and now people are tossing pink pipe bombs at each other; you stole four pounds worth of nice sand and now you gotta pay a $1000. That’s two sides of the same coin. 

For those of you who think I’m being too harsh, let’s be clear: four pounds is a lot of sand. Five pounds is two liter bottle of soda; that’s too much sand. If this was a mason jar, I’d say we let this guy go, but not four pounds. But you can’t just empty out a bottle of Fanta and head to rob Sardinian beaches, pal. However bad things are, they’re not that bad. For those sand-enthusiasts out there that don’t think it’s out of the ordinary to grab that much of the good stuff. I’ll be honest, you’re out of your minds. He knows what he’s doing. If he’s taking this much, he’s probably making a profit off of it. If he’s making a profit off of it, then he should know the punishment- and if he doesn’t, that falls completely on him.

No mercy for this guy. If you’re hunting in the king’s forest you don’t bag the big buck, you stick to little buck. Everybody knew that, and everybody who didn’t know that paid a lot more than a thousand bucks.

p.s. Maybe I’d feel differently if there was a shred of creativity in this attempt. Using a bottle? I’m not saying you’ve got to cram 4.4 lbs of white sand up your ass but at least ducktape these to your thighs or something.