Tens of thousands in the UK per year? I looked up the rate for the USA and found that it's about 42,000 dead due to road vehicle accidents per year... and the USA is somewhat larger than the UK...

Speaking of women who've aged well, Suzanne Sommers is 60. I just noticed her on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. A bit airbrushed, but still, you would think she's maybe 40-something.

-Richard

What happened to quiet desperation as the English way?

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PW -- Plant Whisperer

Moral of the story: don't give your postal carrier the "willies".

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

My eyes are not my primary concern. Their bits? Must hurt a lot.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Yes, it was sort of like that episode of WKRP where Johnny Fever was fearing the "phone cops". Don't mess with the mail cops.

You probably recall those post office shooting incidents that put "going postal" in the lexicon. Well, from some of the stories my mother would tell about postal management and officials on ridiculous power trips (little Nazis, she would call them), I can see how it would push unstable types over the edge.

One thing the postal inspectors routinely do is follow mail carriers around at random to make sure they're not doing anything they shouldn't be. Stealing mail is one big thing. Stopping too long for at some store or restaurant is something on the other end of that scale. They would take cameras with them to get pictures of the carriers in the act if they caught them.

My mother learned about that secret tailing when she first started full time. She noticed a vehicle following her around, sort of lagging back, but definitely following her (no one told her to expect anything like this, even the veteran carriers). She got pretty scared. She was a rural carrier, and our house was on her route. The way it was, she was get here around 11AM, just before lunch. My father happened to be in (and she would've probably hunted him down if he wasn't) and she told him. Let's see, I was probably about 12 years old or so at the time and in school.

Anyway, my father got in his pickup and waited out in the driveway after she pulled out, and sure enough the car she described came "sneaking" along. Well, my father has a "hey diddle, diddle, straight up the middle" streak in him with stuff like this, and he just pulled his truck right in the road in front of that guy, who had to stop quickly, and jumped out, hollering, "What the devil are you following my wife for, buddy?!"

The guy quickly pulled a badge out of his jacket pocket and handed it to my father, saying "Postal inspector, sir, I'm not trying to hurt your wife!". He then quickly explained what he was doing, and nicely. My father then told him he had my mother pretty scared, and he was going to catch her and tell her what was going on. The inspector said he guessed that suited him fine.

Apparently, with his cover blown, he stopped tailing her very soon after. But that is the type of thing those guys routinely do or did back then. And they didn't tell the carriers to expect that, which just wasn't a good idea. It can lead to some bad misunderstandings, as that particular inspector found out.

-Richard

Especially if someone falls off a bicycle.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

I can think of at least 3 women who are much older than me I wouldn't throw out of bed.

Lindsay Wagner, Dawn Wells, and I hate to say it because she's weird...but I think for 75 Charo still has a kickin' body.

y'know - I like these ladies! It takes an enormous amount of nerve, given the prevailing attitude in this country and era. I grant you, I'm not likely to buy the calendar either, but I'd LOVE to meet them.

"You'd do it with Tina Turner, and she's a grannie"--that one girl in The Commitments

I think that a lot of guys are perfectly comfortable thinking about older women if they don't know/can't tell exactly how older a woman the woman is. Hence plastic surgery.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Yes!

Men don't mind a woman who is 80, as long as she looks 30.

The only way that happens, guys, is with cosmetic surgery. Don't care what your genetic heritage, if you still have a 'kickin' body' at 75 or 80, then you've had help.

Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily.

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

I think it is. I think there are women with a "kickin' body" at 75 or 80 who work hard to maintain it. We'll all acknowledge that there are men who are, right? So why are women expected to have had surgery?

Oh, I know. It's the breasts--once they start drooping, that's it, right? And, of course, in our culture, motherhood and the bodily changes associated with it are admirable, but not sexy.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

There are a small number of males in our culture who like those features, or at least enough of them to keep certain websites in business.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Leno explained it last night: the calender is for charity.

Send in a donation, and they won't send you one!

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PW -- Plant Whisperer

Ummm...which websites?

There are many cultures which admire the pregnant female body, but I think you are talking about something else entirely.

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Sorry, family friendly forum.

I'm sure you could Google a bunch of 'em, if your tastes run that way.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Not me. Half-dressed old men are nothing to look at (I'm a woman) either.

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“I shall always be convinced that a watch proves a watchmaker, and that a universe proves a God” ~Voltaire

Nah...I'm married. Hubby would get upset.

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

BTW... technically (although the baby was adopted before I ever even got to know my woman)...my wife was a "granny" in her 40's.