"I'm just going to write because I can't help it."- Charlotte Brontë


Friday, December 13, 2013

Methinks We Might Be Living in a Mike Myers Movie


And while we're on the topic of surveillance, how about this masterful piece of Friday fun, or at least I truly wish it were - the logo for the latest launch by US National Reconnaissance Office, the agency in charge of America's spy satellites.

So let's break it down: a grouchy looking octopus, tentacles gripping a globe, and the mantra "Nothing is beyond our reach." Yep, that really sounds like a great logo for the good guys.

Surely someone snorted out loud when whoever came up with this design presented it for the first time? Surely there was just one sane person in the whole room of military/Peeping Tom types who burst out laughing and yelled 'Pull the other one'? Someone who discerned a slightly dodgy message in the image? Someone grounded in the real world? Someone with a sense of perspective? Someone who'd seen just one James Bond movie? Or an episode of Get Smart?

Anyway, the NRO obviously thought it was okay, and as said, they've stuck it on one of their rockets. You can see the pictures of the launch here. I hope the NRO doesn't get too attached to this logo. It's almost too embarrassing to contemplate the possibility of scores of grumpy, mean-looking octopuses orbiting our planet, their grabby tentacles lined with surveillance suckers reaching out for us the bad guys while they take snaps of us the bad guys as we they go about our their business and eavesdrop on our everyday conversations the bad guys' evil plans.

The world just gets weirder by the day.

Oh, for the good old days when only evil geniuses intent on world domination indulged in such pictorial megalomania. And had fluffy, white cats.

2 comments:

parlance said...

I thought...hoped...this was a joke post. But I looked at the photos of the launch and the logo really was there.

Gitte Christensen said...


Yep. I was sure it was elaborate hoax, but it seems to check out.

Not for the first time, I just don't have a clue how some people get their senior consulting jobs...