Spooked

Lately I have been noticing TV spots for CIA recruiting. Handsomely produced, obviously expensive ads in expensive ad time. No mention of the soul-corrupting actual WORK, natch, just all about how cool a job and what you will earn and learn and how you get to serve your country at the same time. Nice well-scrubbed actors of all genders (well, all “correct” genders, anyway. Don’t ask, don’t tell!) and races, all prettily dressed and coiffed.

Am I alone in thinking this has got to be the heights of subversiveness? Or the depths of perversion? Either way! Or both!
You know, once, when the CIA recruiter was on my college campus the year I graduated, I actually went along to see him. I wore my black trenchcoat, just in case he didn’t get how I was a potential Mrs. Emma Peel. I really thought he would take one look and point and say, “You.”

Instead, he gave me a sales talk on how my government needed good secretaries. With a barely disguised condescending subtext of "And think what a nice all-American husband you'll find if you come work for us." Yeah, right, me with my Mensa IQ, being Patty Secretary married to Mr. Robospy. Never happen.
(These were the days when it was still legal to classify jobs for Ms or Fs. All the cool jobs being M and all the crap ones being F and involving typing. I think that’s changed, at least a little?)
Oh, and if I could speak/read/write Portuguese, he informed me, that would be great. That's what they REALLY needed just at the moment. I'd be a shoo-in, really.

I have no idea why this country was spying on Portugal in 1967, and I never found out. (Unless it had to do with Portuguese-speaking Nazis in Brazil, maybe. Not that they'd ever have let me track any down, being a CHICK and all. Unless I had to seduce them in Portuguese, like the women on Star Trek seducing aliens all for the glory of Starfleet.)

But I must say, it does give me a bit of a turn to see the spooks now advertising on TV. I forget which show it was. Something appropriate like “The Nine” or “Heroes”, though. Hey, maybe they’re looking to hire people with superpowers, and can’t come right out and say so, so they cunningly advertise on shows that people with superpowers would be likely to watch. It could be true.

I remember too hearing vaguely, years ago, about the CIA looking for psychics, to communicate telepathically with submerged submarines (radio can't get through to a sub, though why this should be so I have no idea) and dowse missile locations off maps. I’d learned my lesson, though, and did not volunteer…though there was a Mensa group I was interested in joining, composed of a dozen or so members who could sense earthquakes before they happen, and I happen to be a little bit talented that way myself.

But I didn’t volunteer for that either. And you can’t make me.