By the time you read this, Scotland will have decided already whether to secede from the United Kingdom and form its own independent country. I assure you, however, that as of this writing, the vote is still in the future and I don't know what the outcome will be. I can hazard an informed guess, though, and for that I have KFC to thank.
For you see, just the other day, a customer at a KFC in England ordered a "fillet feast" and received a deep-fried chicken breast that is the spittin' image of England without Scotland perched on top of it (seriously, it's uncanny). Based on this, I think it's safe to assume that Scotland will vote for independence, because if we can't trust chicken breasts to predict the future, we can't trust anything.
The only problem, as I see it, is that the chicken breast is also missing Wales, meaning that we can probably expect that tiny, semiautonomous country to break away soon enough, too. That would be a shame, as it would reduce the United Kingdom to just England, Northern Ireland and a handful of islands that most of us on this side of the pond don't care about.
To put it in terms that we Yanks might understand, imagine if all of Colorado east of Denver decided to secede and form the state of West Kansas. All poor Colorado would have left would be mountains, ski areas, national parks and basically everything else people think of when they think of Colorado. But that's not the point. The point is that Colorado would cease to be the state it is today.
The difference, as far as the U.K. is concerned, is that Scotland and Wales have things that are actually worthwhile, such as golf courses, lake monsters, sheep and Sean Connery. If the U.K. were to lose all that, I can't think of a single positive thing people would think of when they think of England. I dare say it would become a cultural wasteland so desolate it would finally make English food appropriate for the nation it feeds.
I know a lot of you probably think my logic is flawed, and I have to say that in some ways I agree with you. Normally, as a respected journalist in my own mind, I'm much more skeptical than this when it comes to seeing images or omens in my food. I'm not saying I haven't seen Jesus or Mary in my oatmeal; I'm just saying I usually take it with a grain of salt and a heaping tablespoon of brown sugar.
But with all the weird things going on in the world right now, I would caution everyone out there against ignoring obvious portents like deep-fried chicken breasts and three-eyed cows.
Oh, you didn't hear about that one? Yeah, that one's a little creepy.
A few weeks ago in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a calf was born with a third eye in the middle of its forehead. It being a cow, and India being India, the calf is naturally being revered as a god incarnate, in this case the three-eyed Hindu god Shiva. This has made the billions of people living in Tamil Nadu very happy, and they've taken to touching the calf's forehead for good luck. This, however, makes little sense.
Shiva, in Hindu mythology, is known as "the destroyer," and when he gets angry, his third eye opens and shoots out flames of destruction. I'm no cow, but I feel like if I had an eye in the middle of my forehead and people started rubbing it, that would make me angry and likely cause me to unleash my own fire of destruction. So if you hear in the near future that Tamil Nadu is engulfed in flames, you'll know why.
Here in the U.S., there was also a recent food-based religious sighting (I know Indians don't consider cows food, but I do). However, that one was so moronic that even I, curator of all that is stupid, am hesitant to mention it.
The food in question was a pirogi that someone at a church festival in Michigan decided looked like it had Jesus' face on it. I've seen a picture of the pirogi, though, and the "face" looks a lot more like Charles Manson than Jesus.
Of course, if the face had appeared on a deep-fried chicken breast instead of a Polish dumpling, then I'd have to take it seriously.
Todd Hartley is having fried chicken and pirogies for lunch today, omens be damned. To read more or leave a comment, please visit zerobudget.net.