webcaming with the iraqi

An acquaintance from the old serial happy hour days is coming over this morning. He’s a tax consultant and will be helping us do some damage control on our out of whack taxes before we go to the new CPA firm.

As a result and with all that the visit implies – I couldn’t sleep so I was up at about 2:30am and just stayed up to work on a logo project.

I took a break and fired up my chat clients and poked my head into the bearmen chatroom to see who was talking about what… Nothing interesting as usual. Shortly after I logged on, YM blipped me a message from a name I didn’t recognize.

Somebody lurking on bearmen saw my profile and decided to message me.

Come to find out this guy is a married closet job in Iraq and runs a small internet cafe south of Baghdad. Behold… A Bag-Daddy.. (phraseology thanks to xenohomo.

Surreal.

He was british educated so he could carry on quite well with the conversation.

We talked, of course, about the war…. His general take on it was “yeah – war is bad – but Sadam was bad too”… His only real worry was that the US is going to pull out too quick and their new government will cave in on itself.

He concurred completely that he felt the “core” issue at play is “oil” and “power”… *duh – although our administration and subsequent media feed would have you believe otherwise.

What really struck me about the guy, (despite the crap going on there), was his enthusiasm. I got a sense that he was really optimistic about a new form of government…. We theorized that if Iraq could democratize and get it’s shit together, with their oil, they could become a serious world economic player benefiting it’s people – rather than a handfull of bozos like Sadam.

He had to leave for lunch before I could really quiz him about every day life in occupied Iraq. He did show me his guns which he keeps within arm’s reach for “protection” – including a Russian-made machine gun which once belonged to his father.

I’m mildly paranoid now. He assured me he was on a DSL via satellite uplink. And I assured him to NOT underestimate the surveillance technology of the United States Government. Not that we did anything wrong – I kept my Bush-Bashing to a bare sugar-coated minimum.

As paranoid as I’m apt to be – I’m a little tickled at the notion that some CIA guy had to endure watching me flashing my ass on camera for the Iraqi bear who has a fetish for younger, hairy, heavy-set anglos.

(giggle)

I better not blog about this – I don’t want Ashcroft knocking down my door and arresting me.