Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer and Bart start stealing grease from businesses and selling it, in the era where The Simpsons continued to be funny for a while but basically abandoned the idea of actual, realistic plots that meant anything?

It’s taken almost 10 years, but the grease-stealing epidemic foreseen in that episode has become a real-life problem:

Investigators said that “people are stealing it left and right” and that the grease is so sought after, it’s been dubbed “liquid gold.”

The price of the cooking oil, which can be converted into bio-fuel and used to power engines, has skyrocketed almost 400 percent since 2000. Restaurants that once paid to get the muck shipped away are now being paid almost $200 for one tank of used grease.

I can’t believe that the grease-stealing episode, of all ridiculous Simpsons plots, was the one that actually turned out to be a decade ahead of its time.

Do you think every time someone had the grease stolen from their restaurant, they yelled in a Scottish accent “Ackh! Me retirement grease!” ‘Cause I do.