THE CONCEPT OF A WRITER’S “VOICE,” reflected upon by a writer who is losing his voice to cancer — Christopher Hitchens.

SUNDAY MORNING TALKING HEADS talk about the end of OBL, as drawn by the wonderful Crack Skull Bob.

A REMINDER… in case you’ve forgotten how great kissing is.

TOO BIG FOR STROLLER.

BIN LADEN’S HERBAL VIAGRA. A product, Avena syrup, gets a sudden boost in publicity, with a bad celebrity endorsement. I wonder if that helps or hurts business. Probably helps!

DEMOCRATS SEE HIGH GAS PRICES as a good occasion for raising taxes on oil companies. The NYT passes along the Democrats’ puzzling PR on the subject. Senator Menendez says: “Big Oil certainly doesn’t need the collective money of taxpayers in this country. This is as good a time as any in terms of pain at the pump and in revenues needed for deficit reduction.” The collective money? Interesting use of the word “collective.” It’s a tell, isn’t it? If anyone has money, they have the people’s collective money. Somehow taking that is supposed to to help people who are feeling “pain at the pump.” It’s hard to see how. But maybe the key phrase is “This is as good a time as any.” It’s always a good time for taxing!

(Also posted at Althouse, where you can comment, if you like.)

LONGNECKERS! I knew it!

WE SPENT MIDDAY AT LONGNECKER GARDEN in the UW Arboretum. There should be lots of flowering trees by now, but everything is late this year. The Mother’s Day revelers had to content themselves with magnolias and daffodils.

I like the name of the place: Longnecker. In these days of “truthers” and “birthers” and “deathers,” I look at “Longnecker” and try to dream up strange ideas about people with long necks.

SIMON AND PAULA, together again.

SPIDER SEX MOVES are very intense. And don’t you think the spideress — drugged in the video — makes a strong — implicit! — argument for female passivity? (That’s the conversation I’m starting over on my blog this morning.)

I HATE HOROSCOPES but I love newspaper blackout poems.

ABOUT THAT CHEERLEADER WHO WOULDN’T CHEER for the player she’d accused of rape. Let’s talk about the free speech and other legal issues, but you’ve got to get the timeline right.

“YOU’RE THE SHARK!”/”I’m only a SEAL, sir.” Alan K. Henderson bests SNL at writing an SNL script on the ripe occasion of OBL’s demise.

RIFFING ON THAT WATCHING-YOURSELF-ON-TV THING that Osama started.

BLAMING FREUD, NOT FREIDAN for the denigration of the stay-at-home mother.

(And happy mother’s day, to all you mothers, at home and out in the world!)

“JUDGE GIVES IMMIGRANT IN SAME SEX-MARRIAGE a Reprieve From Deportation” after … the Obama administration sends “an unusual signal.”

“SHE WANTS TO HONDLE over a pissant little amount.” The problems of a shopkeeper… and the consequences for a restauranteur.

‘I BID YOU FAREWELL WITH A HEAVY HEART/Never from my mind will your memories thwart.” Written about Abbottabad by Major James Abbott — the Abbott in Abbottabad — and considered by some to be the worst poem ever written.

ADDED: Come over to my home blog, Althouse, where we have comments, if you’re inclined — as I am — to write a parody of the poem.

“KLOPPENBURG LAYING FOUNDATION to delegitimize inevitable Prosser win.”

GIVING MICHAEL MOORE CREDIT “for being consistent and non-partisan.“

IT’S NOT EASY ESTIMATING THE HEIGHT OF A MAN USING SATELLITE IMAGERY. The “Pacer” — who turned out to be the 6’4″ Osama bin Laden — was estimated to be somewhere between 5’8″ and 6’8″.

A TRUCE ON MORAL ISSUES? I see a distinction between abortion and homosexuality… in the mind of Santorum.

WHAT IF YOU HAD A SLUTWALKING PROTEST and nobody dressed like a slut?

“MASEL WAS THE LONGTIME ORGANIZER OF WEEDSTOCK, an annual celebration of marijuana and the call to legalize it. It was held in different counties and locations, often attracting the attention of local law enforcement. The Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival outside the Capitol drew criticism from Attorney General Don Hanaway in 1990. Masel challenged Hanaway to a chess match, saying it would prove that past marijuana use hadn’t hurt his brain. Masel said he would even pay $5,000 if he lost any one of the four games in the match. He also said that he would stop smoking marijuana, which he said he has done ‘almost every day’ for 21 years, if he lost the match. Hanaway refused, saying, ‘Some things aren’t funny, and drug abuse is one of them.'” From the Milwaukee State Journal obituary for the great Madison, Wisconsin activist Ben Masel, who died last Saturday of lung cancer at the age of 56.

You can read the posts at my blog that are tagged with his name here, including this one from March 24, with video of him in the state capitol rotunda conducting “a test of the emergency free speech system.”

“IF GOV. SCOTT WALKER’S UNION BARGAINING MEASURE BECOMES LAW and forces do-or-die recertification votes for public employee unions, some large public unions may simply skip the votes and drop their official status with the state…. To stay alive, the unions under Walker’s legislation would have to get 51% of the vote of all the potential union members in their bargaining unit, not just the ones who actually cast ballots. They also will have to win the vote again every year or their union will cease to function and be unable to reconstitute itself for at least a year after that.”