Yeah, oh shit, the landscape is gorgeous. I got to see the western quadrant from the open door of a helicopter and it was like flying over a country from a fantasy novel.

Aren't they adorable? He was in a cage, hanging from the eaves of one of the shops. I really want one, both because he reminds me of my time there, and because they don't sing very loud. I love cockatiels and cockatoos but I can't handle the screaming.

Sometimes I feel like I went to Narnia. I don't have much to prove I was there except a photo album, and since I'm the one that took all the photos and I'm not in any of them, I have a hard time making it feel real. I wish I had a little Narnia bird of my own that I can look at and remember that it happened.

I was in Herat and, for the last two or so months, Kabul. I didn't see any camels, but at the bazaar, I saw a canary with what looked like Beatles hair. Cute little guy! And a wild dog down by the airfield that looked like a corgi with long coyote legs. And a camel spider on a door handle by the Lithuanians' office. Fuck that.

Before you come up with another joke, this area receives blizzards pretty regularly, and there are plenty of innocent people there just trying to live their lives in what is basically a mix of prehistoric ruins and a Fallout 3 dirt wasteland of Soviet warfare. Lots of women, old people, and kids who have very little to do with the Taliban and have probably never even met them. Afghanistan is the size of Texas, and the west has been kicking them around since the Victorian era. Arthur Conan Doyle's Watson was an Afghanistan veteran way back in the Sherlock books.

I spent a year there in 2010-2011, and it's not all camels and durka-durka.

I don't really care about "Antifa," and don't give a shit what they're doing. Antifa is also not some organized, monolithic group, despite what Fox News tells you. It's simply anyone that doesn't want to be wiped out of existence by the state - or anyone, really - for no reason other than fear and ignorance.

And no, I don't advocate shooting anyone or running anyone over. But when I have to move to another state, or leave the country, because I and my family's existence has been made illegal, what is my recourse? Just go to jail? Just let them take me out back behind the courthouse and put a bullet in my head?