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See who earns the biggest bucks from the grave. A few of these names may just surprise you!

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<a href="http://www.termlifeinsurance.org/top-earning-dead-celebrities-of-the-decade-pic/"><embed src="http://www.termlifeinsurance.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/DeadCelebrities.jpg" alt="dead1" width="640" height="416" border="0" /><br />Top Earning Dead Celebrities of the Decade</a>

According to Wikipedia, “all senses of irony revolve around the perceived notion of an incongruity between what is expressed and what is intended, or between an understanding or expectation of a reality and what actually happens.”

Basically, you say one thing and another thing happens. You expect something, and then the opposite occurs. With that in mind, let’s go on and mock the tragic deaths of other human beings because we find the circumstances around them mildly amusing.

1. Felix Powell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Powell

Who: Felix Powell, songwriter and Staff Sergeant in the Royal Army.

How He Died: He shot himself in the heart using his duty rifle while wearing his uniform.

What Made It Ironic: Powell wrote the music behind the famous marching song, “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile”. His song became world-famous and was noted as “perhaps the most optimistic song ever written”.

Smile, smile, smile all the way to hell

Powell’s suicide just goes to show that even the most upbeat people among us can be cauldrons of boiling existential angst. Decent, caring people will find that deeply depressing. Thankfully, this is the Internet, and none of those people spend any time here.

What could possibly be depressing about this?

2. Jim Fixx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Fixx

Who: Fixx was a major health nut, and author of the 1977 bestseller “The Complete Book of Running.” He was a member of Mensa, wrote a book of puzzles for geniuses, and was generally the most infuriatingly perfect person in the public spotlight. When he died, stand-up comedians everywhere rejoiced at having a year’s worth of material handed to them on a silver platter.

How He Died: A heart attack, while running. It was like a gift from God.

Jim Fixx, patron saint of the easy joke

Why It’s Ironic: Fixx made a fortune convincing people that running could vastly extend the human lifespan, then he died while running. Take THAT, healthy people. Your puny exercise can’t stave off death’s sociopathic advances any better than our tactic of eating nachos in the bath tub and weeping silently.

Screw healthy living, pass me the Cheetos and a big ole bottle of Old English.

3. Michael Anderson

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&dat=19890308&id=qQMPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HYQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4778,2961731

Who: Anderson was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by electric chair in 1983.

An artist’s representation of the condemned

How He Died: Electrocution.

Why It’s Ironic: Electrocution is just what you would expect to happen…if Anderson hadn’t had his sentence reversed shortly thereafter. He managed to convince a jury that he didn’t deserve to die for his crimes. Unfortunately for Anderson, the Gods of Irony have a finely-tuned sense of comedic synchronicity.

What a shitty way to die

One day Anderson tried to fix his television while sitting on a metal toilet. He ended up screwing the operation up so badly that he electrocuted himself to death. It’s one of those moments that proves the universe is run by omnipotent assholes with a dark sense of humor.

4. Marcus Licinius Crassus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Crassus

Who: Crassus was a Roman general and statesman. He was one of the wealthiest men in the history of the human race. If Bill Gates’ daughter gay-married Oprah and they had a child who inherited all of their money after a tragic skiing accident, that kid still wouldn’t come close to being as rich as Crassus was.

The truly wealthy don’t need bling

One time, he bought an entire army and financed the invasion of a major world power all with his own funds. Hey don’t hate the guy too much, unlike Dick Cheney, this guy was badass enough to fund his wars with his own money, not the tax payers’.

How He Died: He either choked to death or burned to death. It’s not entirely clear which came first.

Why It’s Ironic: After being defeated in battle by the Parthian army, Crassus was captured and put to death by the Parthian king. Eastern potentates back then were a whimsically cruel little bastards, and Crassus was executed by having molten gold siphoned down his throat.

Delicious

It’s easy to judge the Parthians for showing ridiculous sadism in their methods of punishment, but, come on, the asshole did invade their country. That’s a dick move.

5. Hans Steininger

Who: The man with history’s longest beard, measuring an astounding 4.5 feet. Steininger’s beard was, perhaps, the single most glorious expression of facial hair in human history. Artists didn’t just draw the damn thing, they immortalized it in stone.

This sculpture proves that, 1. Hans Steininger was a stone-cold badass and, 2. He always packed a blade. He knew what was up.

How He Died: One day, while fleeing a fire, Hans forgot to roll his beard up. He accidentally tripped over it, broke his neck, and died.

Why It’s Ironic: By all accounts, Hans’ beard was his life. The crowning achievement around which his pride revolved. To be fair, if you looked this hot;

ZZ Top Take Heed

You’d be a little arrogant too. Unfortunately for Hans, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and he just had too much beard.

6. Clement Vallandigham

Who: Clement was a famous lawyer in the late 1800s. He also had a beard, but it was way less badass than Steininger’s.

The proto-neckbeard! We’ve found it!

How He Died: Gun shot wound to the head.

Why It’s Ironic: In this case, circumstances are everything. Simply getting shot in the face isn’t funny, it’s just what happens sometimes when you wander into the wrong neighborhood or bring a keg to Gun Cleaning Night.

College taught us well, anything worth doing is worth doing drunk

Vallandigham’s death was a special case. He was representing a man who killed someone during a bar fight. Clement’s case relied on convincing the jury that the deceased had, in fact, shot himself while attempting to draw his weapon from his pocket. In order to convince the jury, he attempted to recreate situation that had lead to the deadly accident.

Apparently, he did it a little too well. Vallandigham accidentally shot himself. He died of his injuries but, appropriately enough, the court acquitted his client on the grounds that, yes, you can accidentally shoot yourself to death, providing you are either retarded, or an extremely dedicated lawyer.

Above: Great idea

7. Bobby Leach

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Leach

Who: Bobby was a world-famous daredevil, and the second person in history to go over Niagara Falls. Astonishingly, falling off of an enormous waterfall in a metal barrel isn’t what killed him.

This here was a well-balanced man

How He Died: Complications caused by gangrene and an amputated leg. Those injuries still sound like they came from a badass daredevil stunt. He probably tried to jump an elephant in a motorcycle or something…

Why It’s Ironic: Bobby Leach injured his leg after tripping on a banana peel. Reports at the time were inconclusive, but Bugs Bunny may or may not have been sighted in the vicinity during the accident. In the end, even Bobby Leach couldn’t defeat the forces of gravity.

Niagara Falls: Less deadly than slapstick comedy

8. Jerome Moody

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/02/us/victim-at-lifeguards-party.html

Who: Some 31 year old dude in New Orleans.

Protecting your children while wearing douchey sunglasses

How He Died: Drowning.

Why It’s Ironic: Jerome Moody drowned during a party for New Orleans lifeguards. Many of the people in attendance were professional lifeguards, and four guards were on duty. To make matters worse, the party was in celebration of the New Orleans Recreational Department’s first drowning-free swimming season in recorded history.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; New Orleans just can’t win.

I found Waldo

9. Jerome Rodale

Who: One of the founders of the organic food revolution. Rodale was a ‘back to the earth’ naturalist hippy who supported clean living without the use of stimulants like sugar or caffeine. He would not have approved of eating Hot Pockets shirtless while watching Animaniacs re-runs.

How He Died: Heart attack at 72, right after an interview on the Dick Cavett show.

Colonel Sanders?!

Why It’s Ironic: Rodale was a huge advocate for the life-extending benefits of a clean, organic lifestyle. Immediately before his death, during the interview, he told Cavett that, “I’m going to live to be 100, unless I’m run down by some sugar-crazed taxi driver.”

Not everyone has the luxury of going out with a bang. Face it, tons of people get shafted (sometimes literally, continue reading) and are doomed to be laughed at for eternity not for their lifelong merits but how humorous was their exit. Here are our favorite seven deaths.

7. Tree: 1, Jogger: 0

Anyone who jogs regularly has to deal with the fear of dying in some improbable and embarrassing way. Ever since Jim Fixx (http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-1546177/Running-heart-disease-and-the.html), the famous jogging advocate, died while jogging, comedians have taken harsh aim at fitness gurus who die following their own advice. This is because most comedy writers are pale, flabby creatures who hate anyone capable of going more than ten yards without spitting up phlegm and collapsing to the ground in a wheezing clump.

Look ma, no belt!

Normally people who die while exercising either succumb to heart attack, heat stroke, or the crushing weight of an ambitiously loaded barbell. Two joggers earlier this year, however, found a novel new way to die while out for a stroll. On July 29, 2009, a man was jogging through Central Park when a 100-pound tree branch fell off the tree and cracked his skull wide open. He’s currently in a coma and despite rising health care costs, still spends less per year on medical fees than the crazy-as-crack-robotically-enhanced-celebrity, Heidi Montag.

John Connor, where the hell are you when we need you the most?

A few days later, a jogger in Philadelphia was even less fortunate. She was running in Fairmount Park when a 30-foot long branch hit her from 50 feet up. She died instantly. Police suspect she didn’t hear the branch snap because she was listening to her music player.

6. Why I Will Never Ski

Picture this. You’re up in the Italian Alps, finally taking a much needed vacation from the stress of your upper-class lifestyle. The ski lift crests over one of the smaller peaks, and you see the whole glorious mountain range unfold in front of you. You let out a satisfied sigh, that terminates rather suddenly in a throaty scream as the wing of a jet fighter clips the cord that keeps your lift aloft and sends you, and everyone else in the cable car, falling to a gruesome demise.

The DANGER ZONE.

This SOUNDS like a ludicrously unlikely set of circumstances, but it actually happened back in 1998. A U.S. Marine jet in the middle of a training run over the Dolomite mountains clipped the cable of a ski car and killed twenty people. In retrospect, those skiers should have known better than to risk provoking the ire of anything even tangentially related to Dolomite.

While this was a ridiculously rare, one-off accident that will probably never be repeated again in history, it still stands as proof of one of the universe’s great truths: What goes up, must come down…and die.

5. Sign, Sign, On Your Head a Sign

It’s not really surprising that Taco Bell kills people. I have no doubt that millions of Americans have died with fat from Taco Bell burritos and chalupas clogging up their greasy arteries. Apparently choking scores of people’s hearts with greasy meat-wraps wasn’t creative enough for Taco Bell, so they found a novel new way to make the world a more terrifying place.

#109 on the “List of Innocuous Objects That Can Crush You To Death At Random”

In April of this year Diana Durre died after her pick-up truck was crushed by a 65-foot tall Taco Bell sign. (http://www.northplattebulletin.com/index.asp?show=news&action=readStory&storyID=16446&pageID=3). The sign decided to fight back after years of being commercially represented by a Chihuahua and finally stake its independence to the world. At the same time, Mrs. Durre decided it would be a good place to meet a couple from the Internet who wanted to sell them…ironically a dog. An expert stated that the accident probably resulted from the fact that building inspectors are lazy, or retarded, or both.

“I’ve never met a building inspector yet who wanted to ride a bucket up 65-feet to inspect a weld,” said Faggin McNutty, an employee of Love Signs in Grand Island.

I understand wanting to cut corners with your work. Hell, half the time I have to reference something I make the name up. But when the lives (or at least the convenience) of thousands of motorists are in your hands, you’d think taking a short ride up to make sure your sign is held together with more than just hillbilly spit and prayers wouldn’t be too much of an imposition.

Safety inspectors at Chernobyl noted that everything ‘looked okay in the pictures’ and that it would probably be a waste of time to visit in person.

Its an unsettling but unavoidable fact that every day we go outside we put our lives in the hands of people who are just as stoned and incompetent as we are. That’s the price we pay for civilization.

4. Death at a Funeral

Being God has got to get pretty boring after a while, which is probably why he’s made such a habit of one-upping himself. Seldom is this so obvious than in the tragic death of Brazilian widow Marciana Silva, who died when a rear-ender sent her husband’s coffin crashing into the back of her skull. She perished instantly, presumably unaware that she’d just qualified for a Gold Metal in the 2008 Irony Olympics.

Hearse, don’t it?

Mrs. Silva’s tragic demise is more proof that the only safe way to dispose of bodies is to cremate them. The Big Lebowski got it right after all.

Fuck it, man. Let’s go bowl.

3. The Dangers of Elevators

Anyone who’s ridden the Tower of Terror in Disneyworld knows that elevators are not to be trusted. Shoddy engineering, sudden emergencies, and vengeful ghosts are all capable of turning a peaceful trip upstairs into a fatal communion with the forces of gravity. Usually, though, elevators can’t hurt you until you actually step inside of them.

If your bellhop looks like this, it might be not be a bad idea to go look for another hotel.

At least that’s what I thought before I heard about the terrible fate of Doctor Hitoshi Nikaidoh, who was decapitated when it became lodged between the doors of a rising elevator car. Try to picture that for a moment. You’re on your way upstairs, just cruising along doing your daily routine, when suddenly disaster strikes. The elevator door closes prematurely and because you don’t have perfect posture, your head gets chopped off.

As the floor of the elevator tears your head from your neck, you realize all those days hunched over a computer Googling Jessica Alba pics while playing WoW have set you up with a bad case of scoliosis.

We sow the seeds of our own destruction.

While Nikaidoh is so far the only person who has ever actually died in this fashion, one of the characters in the Final Destination series met their end in the same way. I’m not clear on international medical regulations, but I’m fairly certain that qualifies this as an epidemic. The only reasonable solution is to ban all elevators everywhere from use.

Above: Precedent.

2. You Can Get Stuck Down The Drain

Granted, the drain that killed Lionel Desjardins was a bit larger than the average bathtub drain. This tragic incident should still stand as the proof positive every 3 year-old-needs to not trust mommy and daddy when they swear you won’t get sucked down the drain. http://www.thespec.com/news/article/330908

Lionel had just been mugged when he noticed that his wallet had been tossed down a storm drain by a robber who was apparently too much of a dick to leave it on the sidewalk. While he waited for the police to arrive Mr. Desjardins apparently decided he might as well go after the wallet himself. After all, getting a driver’s license replaced is one unholy pain in the ass, right?

Some would argue that avoiding the DMV is worth the risk of death.

While he was down there rooting around for his belongings, Lionel got stuck. The police arrived in time to find the poor bastard wedged deep into the drain with only his feet sticking out. Displaying a marked lack of common sense, Lionel somehow managed to get himself stuck so deep down the drain that firefighters had to use the winch of a passing tow truck to get him out. He died shortly thereafter of ‘being yanked out of the sewer by a big ass tow truck’-related injuries.

Oh yeah, I’m sure that’s gotta be safe for people too.

Stories like this are why it’s wise to sometimes give in to the tides of fashion and pick up a fanny pack. Unlike MC Hammer pants, fanny packs are a trend of yesteryear that could have saved this poor man’s life.

1. Exploding Chair Causes Fatal Rectal Injuries

Some unfortunate Chinese kid’s chair exploded right from under him. Pressure built up in the adjustable height cylinder until it exploded and pierced the poor kid’s hindquarters. Nothing I can say could possibly make this any more terrifying or less hilarious. Having your rectum impaled by chair parts is pretty much the worse way for a computer nerd to go. Betrayed by that which is the source of pleasure, how cruel.

Rectum? Damn near killed ‘em. Except it did kill him, which either ruins the joke or makes it much funnier.

7. Fantasy Coffins

Where: Ghana

What It Is: The Ga tribe of coastal Ghana believes that a person’s coffin is their home for eternity. While we tend to see coffins as really expensive boxes for people to rot in, they believe that an elaborate, unique casket is a necessary precursor to a happy afterlife. They pick something central to the person’s lifestyle, like a spinning wheel for a seamstress or a cigarette for a hardcore chain smoker, and build the coffin around that.

If We Did Things This Way: About 90% of coffins would be either MP3 players or cell phones. High school kids would either get ostentatious, borderline sacrilegious crucifixes or big fat joints, depending on whether or not they were religious nutjobs or dumbass teen stoners. What’s better than getting cremated with a ton of blow and people actually paying for it?

6. Chinese Stripper Funerals

Where: China…read the header!

What It Is: In Chinese culture, having a metric assload of people show up for your funeral isn’t just a status symbol. The more people who show up for your funeral, the better luck your family will have in the years to come. While having oodles of people come to see you off to the great beyond is important, whether or not any of those people knew you isn’t.

It is a universal fact that nothing gets people in seats like huge, gorgeous tits. Take this, for example:

Case in point.

That’s why the Chinese have taken to hiring strippers and ‘exotic dancers’ for their funeral processions. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5280312.stm) Despite the fact that it’s technically illegal, the practice still flourishes. It doesn’t matter if you’re a dirt poor farmer or a wealthy businessman. If your family cares, they’ll hire pretty ladies to wiggle their meat-melons at the crowd. It’s a good thing.

In China, the Funeral Erection is a sign of respect, not a precursor to social ostracism.

If We Did It Here: Here in the Land of the Free, people wouldn’t get prosecuted for hiring funeral strippers. God bless America, and her flesh-tone mountains majesty. For once our homeland gets something right.

5. Buddhist Sky Burials

Where: Tibet

What It Is: The Buddhists believe in being one with nature and all that hippy bullshit. While we prefer to pump our dead friends up with chemicals and stick them in non-biodegradable containers, they try to make sure their remains go back into the circle of life. It’s a perfectly rational position to take; decay is a natural and necessary part of the natural order of things.

But it’s also really gross, and so are Buddhist sky burials. If the phrase ‘sky burial’ made you imagine hang-gliding corpses, you’re about to be very disappointed.

That wouldn’t be a bad tradition to start, though.

Here’s how it goes. A monk and some guys called “body breakers” place the corpse on a slab, and chop it into tiny pieces. Then they grind the bones and flesh into a powdery goo, and feed it to vultures. Carrion birds are seen as sacred by the Buddhists because they live without preying on any other creatures or doing harm. It may be a perfectly sensible way to handle death, but it still seems a little more Hannibal Lector-ish than you expect a bunch of peaceful monks to be.

Buddha hungers for flesh.

If We Did It Here: Anything that involves dismembering the corpses of loved ones probably won’t be very popular in this country. Stuffing dead people with preservatives, painting their faces, and having all their friends come by and stare at them is perfectly normal and sane. Using them to feed animals and contribute to the local ecosystem though, that’s just wrong.

It’s probably a good thing we don’t do sky burials here. Vultures have it hard enough in this country without being fed the ground-up remains of someone who subsisted on Big Macs his entire life and lived in a house covered with lead paint.

Or as my momma called it, wall candy.

4. Fiji Murder Ceremonies

Where: The Island of Fiji

You know, where overpriced bottled water comes from.

What It Is: One of the worst things about dying is leaving all of your friends and family behind. I mean, who knows what kind of cool things those moochers are going to get up to once you’re gone. They’ll probably throw tons of parties and give away all of your stuff. Kinda like when you moved off to college.

When a male died in Fiji, it was tradition for his survivors to pay tribute, or loloku, to his memory. They do this by hosting an elaborate feast at his death, dressing up his corpse, and burying him with the strangled bodies of his wives, mother, best friends, servants and, in some cases, children.

Sometimes Pagan traditions are hot.

While this all sounds terrible, the Fijians did it with the kindest intent. They didn’t want anyone to have to go into the great hereafter alone. If you had a really close buddy, they figured breaking up the friendship would be crueler than a little bit of murder. Wives, young children, and servants were comfort items. We wouldn’t want to go to heaven without either porn or free angel-sex, and neither would they.

The coolest part of the ceremony is the fact that murder is a part of the whole funeral spectacle. They literally strangled the dead man’s family, kinfolk, and dear friends while standing over his body. You’d think they’d go for poison, or beheading, or some other relatively quick, painless method. But nope; strangling it is.

(http://books.google.com/books?id=1kxCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA499&lpg=PA499&dq=fiji,+strangling+friends+and+wives&source=bl&ots=Jga-0QR-rr&sig=pIIcliqy9PhRXJJfwpwqckmOPb0&hl=en&ei=dYuZSuy1Lt2c8QaDlYiyBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

If We Did It Here: I’m not in favor of this tradition becoming a regular custom, but I think it’d work great for celebrities and other famous figures. Imagine how much better off we’d all have been if David Spade had been buried alive with Chris Farley? Thought so.

Star of Joe Dirt and Dickie Roberts – the worst films of 2001 and 2003.

3. Famadihana, Where Death and Sex Meet

Where: Madagascar

What It Is: Once every seven years or so, families in Madagascar will gather together to go grave robbing. They exhume their dead relatives, rewrap their bones with fresh cloth, and throw huge parties with live music where they dance around with the corpses of their loved ones. It’s a heartwarming and sort of disgusting tradition that binds families together across generations and miles.

They’re not big on sanitation in Madagascar.

Like every ancient human custom, sex plays a big role in Famadihana. It’s not just about respecting the dead and family togetherness. When the dead person’s shroud is replaced, the old one is divided up and given to married couples who are trying to conceive children. They put the shrouds under their mattresses and fuck like nasty pigs until they get a baby.

Compared to actually getting laid, this ritual seems pretty lame. But for a lot of people on the Internet it represents the closest they’ll ever get to actual sex.

Dead people in Madagascar get more action than this guy.

If We Did It: The sex shroud stuff is up to whatever freaky shit you folks are into. It’s not my place to judge your borderline necrophiliac tendencies.

What our society should look into adopting is the tradition of digging up corpses and throwing lavish parties. It doesn’t even need to be a family affair. Just have the cops chill out for like, a night, while people dig up dead people and dance and eat cake. It’ll be just like Mardi Gras, but the tits probably have have maggots coming out of them.

Light my fire.

2. Self-Mummification

Where: Japan

Japan.

What It is: The ancient Egyptians built history’s largest funeral industry around mummifying their leaders. Over in Japan, a bunch of Buddhist monks have figured out how to do it to themselves. Considering the average funeral here costs $6500, and the average Buddhist self-mummification is, well, free, it seems like a pretty good deal overall.

Of course, you have to spend the last years of your life meditating and denying all earthly pleasures before you can do it. Some Japanese monks follow a tradition called Shugendo, which roughly translates to “becoming Abbott and Costello’s worst nightmare”Only two-dozen monks at most have ever actually gone through with this process, which should tell you something right there.

The only way to prepare is by eating a special nut and seed diet for three years, without fail or slip-up. No splurging because it’s Friday and you’re in the mood for a change. The monks also have to embark upon a strict exercise regimen, designed to strip their bodies of all fat. Once they’re down to bathing-suit slim, they spend the next three years eating only bark and roots and drinking a poisonous tea. The tea contains a natural lacquer, which coats the monk’s insides after years of regular use. Basically, they’re painting their own insides with sealant.

Once they’re all lacquered up, the monks crawl into a stone tomb to die. They sit in the lotus position and meditate, ringing a bell once a day to let their fellows know they still live. When the bell stops ringing, the tomb is sealed. They let the body sit awhile to dry, open up the tomb and, boom, instant Buddha statue!

I WANT BRAINS!

If We Did It: Let’s be honest folks, nothing that requires six years of self-denial and meditation is ever going to catch on in America. We’d have better luck convincing people to commit suicide by drowning themselves in great big buckets of shellac.

Shellac seals in the flavor.

1. SPACE Burials

Where: The Twenty-first (and some of the 20th) century

What It Is: This is the modern world and specifically modern America’s entry to the “badass funeral customs” Olympics. And it wins the Gold goddamn medal. Want to know why?

Because space is f’ing awesome. THAT’s why.

It just doesn’t get any more boss than having your final earthly remains stacked in a giant missile and shot out into the black. That’s the textbook definition of awesome. To date, only 150 people have been badass (or wealthy) enough to be buried in this supremely kick-ass manner. They include Dr. Timothy Leary (wrote a bunch of books about LSD), Gene Roddenberry (brought homo-eroticism to science fiction), and Eugene Shoemaker (he was a famous astronomer who was buried on the moon).

If you’re in the market for a space funeral, some companies (http://www.celestis.com/) now can do it for as little as a grand. That’s pretty affordable, and it ensures you a ceremony that not even pyramids filled with riches can equal in ridiculous opulence.

How Our Descendants Will Do It: One word: Corpse-pedos.