Yesterday as families were sitting down to dinner in San Bruno, California, a 30-inch wide, 60 year old natural gas transmission pipeline owned by Pacific Gas & Electric exploded, creating an apocalyptic inferno of flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air, something that fire department officials said they had never before seen, and the fire was not extinguished until this morning.

Aircraft normally used to fight forest fires had to be called in to drop water and chemicals over the suburban neighborhood.  The explosion created a 30 foot deep crater, and the fires destroyed at least 30 homes, injured more than 50 people (many of them critically burned), killed at least four people, and left more than a dozen family pets reported to the Humane Society as missing.  Hundreds of people were evacuated, including from a nursing home.

Officials say that the death toll will undoubtedly go up as the rescue crews survey the area with cadaver dogs.  The fireball and smoke plume was so high in the sky that your San Francisco correspondent was able to see the smoke plume from twelve miles to the north.  The morning after images are akin to those of Dresden in the ’40s.

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Delaware Republican Senate primary candidate Christine O’Donnell, whom we’ve managed to ignore despite her pleas for America to quit whacking off — think of the unconceived children, people! — is questioning her opponent’s sartorial choices:

“You know, these are the kind of cheap, underhanded, un-manly tactics that we’ve come to expect from Obama’s favorite Republican, Mike Castle,” said O’Donnell. “You know, I released a statement today, saying Mike this is not a bake-off, get your man-pants on.”

Good advice. And if you hit Old Navy, you can be confident in a comfy fit.

O’Donnell Blasts Castle’s ‘Un-Manly’ Tactics [TPM]

We suppose we’re supposed to get a chuckle out of the news that Rush Limbaugh and Whackjob Florida Pastor are both proud members of the Cape Central High School Class of 1969. But at our woefully advanced age, what really catches our attention is this:

Gregg Hopkins, a Cape Central alum, recalled Jones in a comment on the site:

“I knew him the early 70s. He graduated from Central (I think) in 69. He was a funny, friendly guy back then, when he was dating my friend, Lisa. My how the years change some people. Every picture I’ve seen of him, he’s wearing an intense scowl.”

Terry Jones was once young, and free, and happy. What the hell turned him into a vile hateful douchebag?

Then again — okay, fine, you saw it coming, so we’re not even going to write it.

Rush Limbaugh, Pastor Terry Jones Were High School Classmates [Politics Daily]

After Thursday afternoon’s special edition of Not Necessarily the News, we figured we needed a break. And what better break than Spike? Or even better, one of the responses to Spike? Say, the dance troupe of six kids?

But no, Sheryll wasn’t going to let us off that easy. She mischievously hacked the YouTube search system, so that when we looked for “Spike Can Dance,” results for “CanCan Dance” turned up — including this clip from a British music hall, circa 1943.

Which, in turn, made us think of Thursday afternoon again.

Damn you, Sheryll. Haven’t you punished us enough?

Given the kerfuffle over the Florida preacher with the Yosemite Sam mustache who even Fred Phelps thinks is koo-koo pants, you may have missed this latest story guaranteed to inspire more fury directed at the US and its troops:

US soldiers ‘killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies’

Five Army soldiers have been charged with the murder of three Afghan civilians, and seven more have been charged with covering up the murders and assaulting another soldier who attempted to report the murders to superior officers.

According to the allegations, after murdering the civilians, the soldiers cut off the fingers of the corpses as souvenirs, at least one of them allegedly kept a skull of one of the corpses, in shades of Abu Gharib they posed for pictures with the dead bodies, and then they stole and smoke the hashish that at least one civilian had with him.

The soldiers were part of a brigade stationed in Kandahar in 2009 through the spring of 2010.

But there’s more to the story.

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(Editor’s note: As of 8:30 p.m. ET, with six updates and two mini-updates, just about every reported fact has been undermined. We believe this merits some kind of award.)

Can we get back to conventional bigotry now?

The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy says he is canceling plans to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11.

Great! But wait!

Pastor Terry Jones said Thursday that he decided to cancel his protest because the leader of a planned Islamic Center near ground zero has agreed to move its controversial location.

Ummm… We haven’t heard that one yet. Ruh-roh.

Fla. minister cancels burning of Qurans on 9/11 [AP/Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

WTF Update:

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“Donald Trump has sent an offer to purchase the site of the proposed mosque near New York City’s Ground Zero for the price paid plus 25%, according to a statement received by e-mail.” [Crain’s, via PourMeCoffee]