A German man weeding his garden with a flame thrower managed to burn his house down Friday.

Things started to go wrong for the 54 year old man when he managed to set his hedge alight. The flames spread to his garden shed, before eventually finding some excellent fuel in the form of his house.

If this story isn’t bizarre enough, AFP reports that in Germany flame-throwers are used widely in agriculture and also in gardening, but “generally only for removing weeds from between cracks in paving in driveways and patios.” Remind me to be very, very careful the next time I’m visiting Germany then, because turns out they still take eradicating perceived problems very seriously.

What happens when a tornado crosses the path of a moving freight train? This amazing video shows the result.

I’m sure there are many of us who can related to this picture.

Atari has released the source code of over 15 games developed and sold for the Atari 7800.

Games released include Dig Dug or Centipede or Robotron, although notably you’ll need a 7800 emulator to run any of them.

According to Programmerfish, Atari said the purpose of the release is to give potential developers insight into the Atari’s gaming platform so they may possibly build upon the 7800 series. Why people would want to build upon the 7800 in 2009 I don’t know, but I still like the sound of it.

Downloads available at Programmerfish here.

Sources are saying that Sarah Palin’s sudden resignation as Alaska Governor is actually damage control because a major embezzlement scandal is about to erupt involving construction projects in her home town of Wasilla, Alaska.

Multiple sources have been digging around in the wake of Sarah Palin’s cryptic resignation speech Friday and they’ve found that when Palin was Mayor of her home town of Wasilla, AK in 2002, she was influental in the construction of the Wasilla Sports Complex and hockey arena. First of all, the $12mil+ project ended up in the hands of contractors who were friends of friends of Palin. Secondly, at around the same time the sports complex was being built, so was Palin’s new house. What’s interesting about that is the house is constructed from the exact same materials the sports complex was built with. The windows in both structures are the same, the wood is the same, pretty well everything.

When the house was being built, Palin, being Mayor at the time, influenced the bylaw requiring building permits in the town so that now there is no official list of the contractors who worked on her house.

The information is coming from local Alaskans who have been watching Palin and collecting information for some time. The reason it hasn’t been made public yet is because they have been told by federal investigators to keep their mouths shut so a subsequent media frenzy doesn’t impede the investigation.

It is plausable that the suddenness of Palin’s resignation, which even members of her family didn’t know was going to happen, could be the reason for her rather strange resignation speech - she simply didn’t have time to construct an elaborate speech because she already knew this mess was about to go public in a big way.

Other blogs have already dubbed this as the “Iceberg Scandal” and “Iceberg Gate” but it’s safe to say that we’ll be getting some extremely controversial Sarah Palin news in the near future.

Funny or Die continues to get the best access to people in the news with their latest effort coming from Jon Gosselin.

The video is surprisingly short, but it has its moment, including Jon’s user name of JonMinus9.

LA Lakers coach Phil Jackson will return for another year despite ongoing health issues.

“After consulting with Lakers team internist Dr. John Moe, I feel confident that I can gainfully pursue an NBA season with another long playoff postseason. All things point to go!” Jackson said in a statement.

Jackson has endured an angioplasty, suffers from gout and has also had problems with his hip, back and leg.

Jackson holds the NBA record for most championships for a coach, having delivered 10 championships in his 18 years of coaching so far.

Did Sarah Palin Resign as Governor of Alaska because she’s pregnant?

There has been a whirlwind of speculation as to why Sarah Palin suddenly announced her resignation as Governor of Alaska. Some think it’s stress related from all the attention her and her family have been subjected to, particularly the moral issues surrounding her daughters. Some think she may even be preparing to run for President of the United States in the 2012 Presidential elections, but the one that is probably most interesting was presented by CNN’s Rick Sanchez.

In a discussion on CNN earlier today with Candy Crowley, Rick Sanchez says:

There have been a couple other situations that might cause someone to feel a lot of stress. But aside from those, is there anything going on with her that perhaps may lead her to want to make this decision, and the one thing that’s still left out there is, hey, could she be pregnant again.

Could Sarah Palin have resigned because she’s pregnant?

So what do you all think, Inquisitr readers: Do you think Sarah Palin is stepping down as Governor of Alaska because she may be pregnant?

What are the implications for future high profile female politicians if this is really what’s happening?

Today’s I can’t believe they’re turning that into a movie story comes to us from a View-Master…you know, those binocular like things you insert pictures in to view.

Fringe co-producer/writer Brad Caleb Kane will be writing the movie for DreamWorks Pictures.

According to Coming Soon, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (”Fringe,” Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Star Trek) are behind the film and that it will be “like the old 80’s Amblin movies: Goonies, Young Sherlock… In that vein.”

If they sign Anna Torv for the lead role I’ll be the first in line to watch it, but that aside ZOMG MAKE THIS MADNESS STOP! Someone in Hollywood is just completely taking the massive piss on the entire planet now. Yesterday it was Asteroids, now it’s a View-Master, tomorrow it will be a plastic shopping bag (oh wait, they’d done that already with Confessions of a Shopaholic) and the day after a dog turd.

Sarah Palin has announced that she will be resigning as Governor of Alaska effective July 25th and will not be running for reelection in 2010. Palin says that she has other plans and career directions. She didn’t go into specifics, but here’s the video of her resignation speech.

Sarah Palin Resignation Video

Sarah Palin was a member of the Wasilla, Alaska, city council from 1992 to 1996 and the city’s mayor from 1996 to 2002. After an unsuccessful campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Alaska in 2002, she was appointed as chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003 to 2004. She was elected Governor of Alaska in November 2006. Sarah Palin was the first female governor of Alaska and the youngest person elected governor of that state.

A construction crew contracted to do a survey of the condition of water and sewer infrastructure in Raleigh, North Carolina, filmed a mysterious slimy pulsating mass on the inside of old pipes with a sewer cam.

The video footage of the phenomenon was uploaded to Youtube (see the video embed below) on June 30 and has since gotten nearly 5 million views at the time of writing, with some people speculating that the globs could be an alien life form growing in the sewer systems.

Ed Buchan, the environmental coordinator at the Raleigh Public Utilities Department squelched the rumors that the video was of a new life form, saying that it was actually a colony of worms that live in sac-like blobs attached to tree roots that grow in and around the older pipes. The sacs of worms are extremely light sensitive and move in response to the brightness and heat from the camera lights.

Even though the worms are not alien in the sense that they are actually from this planet, they are still a disturbing sight for anyone who has never seen something like this before, except maybe in a horror movie.

Video of Alien Worms inside a Sewer Pipe

Rihanna, who visited a New York tattoo parlor earlier this week and was photographed inking her signature umbrella logo on the arms of East Side Ink’s attandants, could be facing criminal charges over the incident.

According to a New York City spokesperson:

“Only licensed tattoo artists can administer tattoos in the city according to the City’s Health Code. We are sending someone down to follow up on this.”

Rihanna could be facing a criminal charge for NYC health code violations which carries a maximum fine of $2000.

[Source & Photo: PopCrunch]

If you are a gamer and you want to score yourself some great games over the next week, and holiday weekend, then you need to head over to Valve’s game store and start prepping your download folder for incoming.

Starting of the specials we have the complete 2K Huge Game Pack which includes the following

• Bioshock
• CivCity: Rome
• Civilization IV: Warlords
• Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
• Freedom Force
• Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich
• Prey
• Railroad Tycoon 3
• Railroad Tycoon II Platinum
• Shattered Union
• Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization
• Sid Meier’s Pirates
• Sid Meier’s Railroads
• X-COM: Apocalypse
• X-COM: Enforcer
• X-COM: Interceptor
• X-COM: Terror from the Deep
• X-COM: UFO Defense

Now if you were to buy all those games separately you’d be looking at forking over $229 but if you buy the complete pack you can get them all for $59.99. Not only that but if you really hurry their giving another 10% off until July 7th.

On top of all of that goodness there is an even better deal that is only on for the weekend. For those of you that really like the good old FPS type games (with maybe a bit of RPG thrown in) the Steam store has Fallout 3 on a half-price special. So instead of forking over $49.99 you only need to dip into your wallet for $24.99

For those of you that are maybe a little more sports oriented there’s a special running until July 10th that will let you pick up Virtua Tennis 2009 and save yourself 10% on the store price.

So what are you still doing here .. git … it’s the weekend … it’s gamer time .. git.

Score one for bricks and mortar shopping.

Seattle based authorize.net was offline for hours this morning following a fire at a data center at Seattle’s Fisher’s Plaza. Reportedly many companies were affected, but authorize.net is the only one responsible for millions of online transactions daily. The fire apparently triggered sprinkler systems, as fires often do, and brought down many machines that haven’t been offline “in years.”

To keep customers informed of the status of repairs and accessibility, the company wisely set up a Twitter account. A series of dramatic tweets were ushered in by this first one at 11AM EST:

#authorizenet We are down due to a fire at our primary data center in Seattle. We are working to restore services, but no ETA at this time.

Around noon, the company updated:

#authorizenet I understand transaction processing is back up with the exception of Global processing. We are working to bring that up ASAP.

Although the company has provided information about the current status of transaction processing, questions remain about transactions posted during the outage:

#authorizenet Lots of questions re: post downtime e.g. transactions without auth code. Will post comm with answers once I have them.

Teams hope to restore power to the building by 1:30PM PST. This is the second major epic fail outage at Fisher Plaza in the past year.

The only real extended use of a laptop that I have had is with the one I bought for my wife recently so they have never been high on my priority list of things to get. However some of these concept laptops would be really cool to own if they ever made it past the rendering stage.

Canvas Laptop Concept - designed by Kyle Cherry

Vaio Zoom

Compenion Laptop concept

HP Concept Laptop

Frog Concept Design

top graphic is the Fujitisu Turn Table Concept Laptop – hat tip to Technology.am

The details are still sketchy but an unidentified man has fired at least one shot at the Apple Store in Clarendon, Arlington Virginia, just shortly after the store open this morning. Witness at the scene report hearing a loud bang coming from the back room which was followed by a woman’s screams. A thin-framed, black male believed to be in his twenties and wearing a fake beard was seen fleeing from the rear of the store.

ABC and FOX news are confirming the story and the woman was the victim of a botched robbery.

hat tip to AppleInsider

…and the tabloids imploded.

The Telegraph is reporting that upon hearing the news of the Suleman octuplets, Michael Jackson offered to adopt the eight children to “give Blanket siblings.” Suleman’s lawyer Victor Munoz says he declined the “creepy” offer on Suleman’s behalf. (Because she’s not creepy at all?)

The obsessed with children pop star apparently had three representatives reach out to the Octomom camp before personally calling to speak with the unemployed mother of fourteen children. Jackson was said to be “concerned” regarding reports that Suleman planned to give Malia, Jonah, Isaiah, Nariah, Jeremiah, McCai, Josiah and Noah up for adoption. Because that would be scandalous!

From the article:

According to Munoz, speaking to the Daily Mirror, Jackson told him “Blanket would love to have more siblings”.

“I could take care of all the babies, they could live with me and wouldn’t need for anything. They would have a bright future,” he is said to have told him.

“I want to take care of Nadya. She will be happy and won’t have to worry about caring for her children any more.”

Munoz said that “Michael clearly thought Nadya was unfit and decided he wanted to help [the] children,” but also indicated that the tone of the calls became less about concern and more like a sales pitch. Munoz said the last call indicated that Suleman would “be compensated” in an adoption scenario.

Ha, ha!

As some really boring guy video blogs from the mall about something I can’t even hear, some douche in a beanie unleashes every lame trick in his arsenal of fail to interrupt the poor dude. Unintentionally though, he only makes us laugh when he falls back down a flight of mall stairs on his stupid face.

The dork in the blue fleece gets extra points for only being concerned with further interruptions to his lame-ass speech. Win.

[Via: Fark]

Michael Jackson dug James Brown’s fly casket so hard, he picked one out to bling his way into the afterlife. How Egyptian.

The pimptastic ride coffin, the “Promethean” model, is lined in blue velvet, cast in solid bronze and plated in 14-karat gold. Classy! The coffin isn’t a stock model, and it’s being custom made by Indiana-based Batesville Casket Co. The flashy casket costs $25,000.

The cash-strapped Jackson is being sent off at the Staples Center in equally broke-ass Los Angeles. Older brother Jermaine confirmed to press that a private service for family and friends would precede the grotesque spectacle public funeral set for Tuesday morning.

Tickets for Michael Jackson’s funeral are expected to be free, although the city has not yet confirmed how they plan to distribute them. Tick tock, LA… The organizers for Jackson’s ill-fated and seemingly fatal concert series in London spoke to Fox News and indicated the complex issues of crowd control and ticket distribution were being deferred to crowd-control and event organizing expert… Katherine Jackson?

Michael Jackson reportedly used several variations of his name to apply for loans because his credit history was so poor and financial institutions were reluctant to give him money.

In 2007, the ‘Thriller’ singer - who was raised in the Jehovah’s Witness faith - allegedly applied for loans under the names President Mr Michael Jackson, Michael JJJ Christ-Jehovah, Michael J Jackson ChristJeh, Michael Jackson Jehovah and Mike J Jackson. He also reportedly used alternative spellings of Michael - Micheal and Micheel - in a bid to trick bank managers.

According to Britain’s The Sun newspaper, leaked financial documents linked to some of Michael’s properties show the failed applications. It is illegal to give a false name to a financial institution for money for the purpose of influencing the bank’s decision and anyone found guilty could face fines of $1 million, 30 years in prison or both.

Despite being one of the most successful musicians of all time, Michael has struggled financially in recent years and was reportedly desperate for monetary help.

A source said: “Michael Jackson’s financial affairs were beyond a mess with county court judgements and taxes owed all over the place. No bank was prepared to bail him out.”

Meanwhile, Tommy Mottola, the former boss of Sony music - who own the distribution rights to Michael’s music - has revealed the label has “dozens” of unreleased tracks in storage which could guarantee the pop legend a place in the charts for the next 30 years. He said: “There are dozens of songs that did not end up on any of his albums. People will be hearing a lot of that unreleased material for the first time ever. There’s just some genius and brilliance in there. The releases could go on and on for years - even more than Elvis.”

According to record sources, the collection of tracks includes recently recorded material with Black Eyed Peas singer will.i.am and singer-and-producer Akon. Tommy also said the collection includes singles left off Michael’s earlier LPs, including ‘Bad’ and ‘HIStory’.

It is believed Michael - who currently holds nine out of the 10 top US album chart spots - kept the unreleased tracks back to ensure financial security for his three children Prince Michael, 12, Paris, 11, and seven-year-old Prince Michael II.