Obama does not give a fuck anymore, according to a White House briefing, and certainly doesn’t care about Nancy Reagan’s funeral. Instead, NBC News reports, he’ll be headed to Texas for the annual horror-confluence of indie music and startup culture known as SXSW.

An Illinois funeral home apparently buried a deceased woman a day early, which made for an incredibly sad and awkward situation when her family showed up Friday to view the body and found the wrong woman stretched out in the open casket.

Two hearse drivers, assigned to transporting the body of a Korean and Vietnam War veteran to his funeral in Lecanto, Fla., Tuesday morning, have been fired after they were witnessed stopping at a Dunkin’ Donuts mid-trip.

Six people were shot and two died after gunmen opened fire on mourners leaving a funeral in Brooklyn Monday night, the New York Daily News reports. According to witnesses, as many as 15 shots were fired from a silver SUV into the crowd gathered outside Emmanuel Church of God in East Flatbush.

A Colorado pastor threatened to cancel a woman's funeral because friends and family displayed photos of the deceased with her wife. The service could not continue, he said, as long as there was any evidence that Vanessa Collier, who died at 33, lived what he called "an alternative lifestyle."

We've all had pets that died. Pets die. It's all part of the cycle of life (and death). But a teen in Holland wearing an awesome Pacman hoodie took the initiative to build the first funeral rat helicopter after his pet rodent died from cancer.

Joan Rivers' funeral was held Sunday morning at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East side of New York City, and the tribute was one fit for a legend. Howard Stern delivered the eulogy and it was attended by everyone from Hugh Jackman to Diane Sawyer. Rivers died last week at 81.

Miriam "Mae Mae" Burbank's two daughters told WGNO in New Orleans that their mother was "full of life" and that they wanted her funeral to be just as lively. A "last party" if you will. So they convinced funeral directors to help stage her body with all of her favorite things: Busch beer, menthols, crossword puzzles, disco lights, and tiny New Orleans Saints helmets.

A dilapidated home in the Mantua neighborhood of Philadelphia was torn down this afternoon after local art school students eulogized it with a proper service in a project called Funeral For A Home. Photo via Jessica Kourkounis/AP.

You had one job, Wisconsin National Guard funeral pallbearers, and it didn't involve you posing all gangsta-like with the casket.

Funeral tech is booming. From alkaline hydrolysis, which disposes of one's remains in the most environmentally-friendly way, to rings with diamonds made of a loved one's ashes, the future is now in terms of personalizing your departure from this mortal coil. Today marks yet another milestone in body disposal: the relatively cheap space burial.

In fashion typical of the day, a horse-drawn carriage delivered Margaret Thatcher's coffin to St. Paul's Cathedral in London earlier this morning. The procession route passed a divided crowd, split between cheerers and hecklers. The threat of demonstrations, particularly those from Irish Republicans, caused an influx of security throughout London. The procession was flanked with British Army, Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy as well as over 4,000 Metropolitan Police on duty for the event.

Adele's "Someone Like You" is No. 22 on the Co-operative Funeralcare's chart of songs played at funerals, according to NME. Who knows how scientific the polling of "the UK's leading funeral director" is, but this does point to the fact that at least more than one person has selected a song whose narrator describes her object of affection as ultimately replaceable to play in tribute to the deceased.

At last night's Melbourne stop on her Born This Way Ball tour, Lady Gaga debuted the song "Princess Die," and everything about it was ridiculous. "It's about some of the most deep and personal thoughts I've ever had and it's called ‘Princess Die. D-I-E. D…I…E," she announced, motioning to her Lisa Frank journal with a highway unicorn on its cover.

When the news broke yesterday that Fred Phelps and his infamous "God Hates Fags" Westboro Baptist Church would be protesting the funeral of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno for his role in the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse cases, some of Paterno's harshest critics approved. They think the disruptive presence of Fred Phelps' evil minions, shouting nonsensical passages from Leviticus as some sort of posthumous justice for Paterno's complicity with Sandusky sexually molesting young boys. But there's a difference between the evil that's perceived and real, diabolical evil, and he's not the one being put in the ground.

Didn't get your fill last week of sobbing North Koreans, outlandish communist pomp, or nature "mourning" the passing of dictator Kim Jong-il? Luckily, his funeral had all three!

Used to be, we buried the bodies of the dead in the ground. Imagine the cost: coffin, embalming, funeral service, shovels. Labor. It adds up. Nowadays, we just burn em.

Amy Winehouse is laid to rest. Blake Fielder-Civil memorializes her from yet another jail cell. Jesse James and Kat Von D broke up. Lauryn Hill's boyfriend left her for a model while she was pregnant with his child. Tuesday gossip is somber.

Like something out of a Sam Raimi movie or a really dark version of Tom Sawyer, a Russian woman who was declared dead after collapsing with chest pains awoke at her own funeral and promptly died of a heart attack caused by the shock of waking up at her own funeral. Comically tragic or tragically comical? [Daily Mail]

This weekend, Princeton's class of 2006 celebrates its five-year reunion with a standard-issue bacchanal. This year's theme: "'06 Feet Under." Cute, right? Except when they announce the '06 reunion memorial service, which now looks like it is being introduced with a wacky pun.