Reefer Madness buddy M. Chris Fabricant, the New York City lawyer who authored the fabulous civil rights primer, Busted! Drug War Survival Skills From the Buy to the Bust to Begging for Mercy – a great read and lesson on the current state of civil liberties, driven by examples culled from the files of those unfortunate enough to become statistics in the unwinnable War on Drugs – sent out an e-mail this week, with a link to a DEA press release about poor Wendy Watson, a hapless gal who got popped in Oklahoma and charged with possession and intent to distribute nearly 80 grams of methamphetamine.

Now, Watson’s plight isn’t all that unique, but, as it turns out, when the police searched the car she was driving they also found a copy of Fabricant’s book. Unfortunately, though, it appears Watson failed to read it – if she had, it is unlikely she would’ve been doin’ what she was doing. Indeed, Fabricant says Watson’s tale of woe highlights a list of drug possession no-nos.

It's Friday, Feb. 9, Depeche Mode is on the box, and TCB is on day two of a four-day TCBender. Maybe longer... It's payday too! Brand-new super awesome cover band the Promise Breakers (Faces, Stones, T.Rex, Mats) and bluegrass fiends American Graveyard loosened the bolts last night, and there's nothing like a Red River auto-pedestrian accident at 2am to make you want to sustain the buzz. Tonight it only gets worse with Vietnam - and a family-size bottle of 44D with TCB's name on it - and the Hickoids. Saturday is the Chumps, Pong, and the Black Angels. Sunday, rehab, which would still be more pleasant than reviewing Lucinda Williams' snoozer of a new album. Shins, Smiths, SXSW, and Valentine's Day tunes coming up.

Looking for something to do at 10am Saturday morning? I know - who isn't? - but maybe you can cram this one into your busy schedule: In case you forgot, Responsible Growth for Northcross is holding their Arms Around Northcross event/demonstration/hand-holding tomorrow.

Later that afternoon, RG4N hosts a Wal-Mart Isn't Weird benefit concert for itself down the street from the mall, at Brentwood Tavern, 6701 Burnet Rd., 2-7 pm. Music by Jim Stringer & the AM Band, Bee's Knees Revue, Marshall Ford Swing Band, Darden Smith, and the Austin Lounge Lizards. $10 cover. Kids get in free. See our Community Listings for more information.

On a side note, I sauntered into the ghost mall weekend before last for shits and giggles and ended up coming out with the out-of-print Twin Peaks Season 1 DVD for $25. So, it's got that going for itself, at least. But other than that, that place is capital-C Creepy. Rows of disused purple and neon food-court furniture, empty fluorescent storefronts, the saucy spirit of bygone Hooters hanging heavy over everything. Still, kinda weird knowing that, Wal-Mart or no, the dysfunctional ghost of commerce past will be exorcised from the mall. Take a stroll through there afterward, and see what I mean.

The city of Austin has put a price tag on its snow days earlier this year, and the ice storm's impact on official city costs? $1.6 million.

The cost breakdown goes like this: More than $1 million went to personnel costs, $272,000-plus went to contractors like tree trimmers and tow trucks, deicing supplies ate up $174,000, while $72,000 in other various and sundry services make up the rest.

Ain't a thang to City Manager Toby Futrell, delivering the bizarro faux-modest quote that the city "ensured the ice storm was kept in the realm of mere crisis, not an out-and-out disaster." Ohhhhkayyy.

You've gotta be kidding me:

With so many nonviolent Mexican citizens clogging an increasingly jammed Texas prison system, a state lawmaker thinks it may be time for Texas to set up its own prison in Mexico.

"The plusses are that it's a heck of a lot less expensive to build and staff prisons down there," Sen. Craig Estes said. "They would be Texas-quality, and they'd roughly cost about half."

Minus a major crisis like re-redistricting or school finance, this is shaping up to be an exceedingly strange session. This is the kinda shit lawmakers imagine when left to their own devices?

It only makes sense. With proposals to ease prison overcrowding getting some airtime this session, it's only natural something like this come along, lest the balance be upset. There's a set amount of insanity in the Texas Legislature that must be preserved at all times.

With all the talk out there focusing on the tabloid aspects of the curvaceous Texan's life - especially the recent issues involving her son and marriage, poor thing - not much has been made of the fact that the legal battle over her inheritance of her husband's estate is still ongoing - even though they're both dead now.

There's also this largely unmentioned aspect: Never ones to shirk expanding federal reach, the Bush administration sided with Smith in the trial, in order to "protect federal court jurisdiction in disputes." The trial should be a little weirder now.

It's almost Valentine's Day, and you know what that means: If you don't have someone with whom to slow-dance to Journey's "Open Arms," time to start sharpening that straight razor. TCB has compiled a special playlist just for you for tomorrow. But first, he realizes there are a lot of couples in Austin. Therefore, there are a lot of guys looking forward to busting a nut next Wednesday but far too many of whom are completely unschooled in the art of verbal panty-removal. Enter Pretty Ricky. If you know them at all, you indie rock nerds probably know the Miami R&B quartet as the group whose album Late Night Special kept the Shins' Wincing the Night Away from being No. 1 last week. (Or as the inspiration behind latest SNL/YouTube sensation "Dick in a Box.") But take it from one who knows; these 12 songs are overflowing with prurient poetry and useful romantic advice. After all, Spectacular, Pleasure, Baby Blue, and Slick 'Em "put it down like a vet." See for yourself after the jump.

It looks like it’s been a big couple of weeks for our man Tom Riley, spokesman for the White House Office of the National Drug Control Policy. As Reefer Madness reports below, instead of respond to a reporter’s questions about the ONDCP budget, Riley called the reporter’s boss – in a true second-grade nanny-nanny-boo-boo moment – to try to imply that reporter Ryan Grim was somehow unqualified or too biased to handle reporting on the ONDCP because he used to work for the pot-law reform group, the Marijuana Policy Project.

Now, Vote Hemp reports that Riley worked his seemingly mean-spirited – and, unfortunately, completely inaccurate – brand of spin on Jan. 28 for a reporter from the Minneapolis Star Tribune with his comments about industrial hemp farming. In that article, Riley said this: “You have legitimate farmers who want to experiment with a new crop,” he said. “But you have another group, very enthusiastic, who want to allow cultivation of hemp because they believe it will led to a de facto legalization of marijuana.” And, Riley lamented, the “last thing law enforcement people need is for the cultivation of marijuana-looking plants to spread. Are we going to ask them to go through, row by row, field by field, to distinguish between legal hemp and marijuana?”

According to The Politico (a new, Washington, D.C.-based rag covering national politics), the White House Office of the National Drug Control Policy has gotten its knickers in a twist over Politico reporter Ryan Grim’s coverage of the office’s weakass, ineffective anti-drug media campaign. For a story published in today’s edition, Grim rehashes the program’s lame results – in part, that government studies have found that the anti-drug ads may actually increase the likelihood that teens will try smoking marijuana, for example – when reporting that Bush’s budget plan calls for a 31% increase in funding for the ONDCP ad project, which would raise its budget to $130 million over the next year.