Paging Dr. Benway

Comic book writers, if you're looking for topical villains, and I mean bad ones, look no further than a story that broke in today's New York Times and spread everywhere. A leaked Red Cross report detailed coercion "tantamount to torture" in the US prison at Guantanamo and introduced us to some sweethearts named Biscuit:

...[S]ome doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."

Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators, the report said, sometimes directly, but usually through a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or B.S.C.T. The team, known informally as Biscuit, is composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators, the report said.

American torture doctors.

Yanks Dodge Bullet?

Pedro is a step closer to becoming a Met.

The Greatest 1940s Super-HeroComic Book Panel Of All:

Via Pure Excitement Comics, a discontinued web anthology of public domain comics--oops, I mean classic sequential literature. If you--like me--love this sort of thing, check out what's left of the project before it vanishes. Danger: click only on issues 1, 3 and 37 & up. The other links are fruitless, unless you're looking for the slowest and most annoying pop-up ads in the world.

Holiday Gift Idea

"...And if he throws at your head, I want you to charge the mound and bust that little sonofabitch right in the nuts... What? Hey, I admit it. I get pretty intense coaching these games."

Thanks For The Wild TurkeyAnd The Passenger Pigeons

Americans looking for words to recite over dinner's fragrant carcass tomorrow might consider A Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs.

Kelly and I are off to her homeland--the desert city of Wenatchee, WA--where I intend to give thanks for beer, Shaun Of The Dead, and basketball violence. Happy Thanksgiving.

Q: How Long Are You? A: About 45 Seconds.

Richard D. Allen's Seven Questions For The Guitar Solo From "Stairway To Heaven", at McSweeneys.

NBC, 8:00

MATERNITY FEAR FACTOR: All of the bug-eating, neck-snapping, flesh-burning stunts you love--with a twist! These players are pregnant!

Seed Of Chucky

"As I watched him carrying the turkey tray on television, I started picturing him in a display box." Via Today In Iraq.

Dinks

The Rumsfeld Diet

From today's Washington Post, Children Pay Cost Of Iraq's Chaos:

Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago... The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.