An American Road Trip
This one’s for free. You can read it on dustinbooks.com. I wrote it after driving from Walden, Colorado, to Dawson, Yukon Territory, in 2014. Everyone should take a road trip once in his or her life, but the days when that will be as free and easy as it is now are coming to a close.
No Humans Were Hurt
I have written nine books and am working on a couple more when my time between golf games allows. The three books described here are available for sale now. The first is “No Humans were Hurt and Other Stories from The Jackson County Star Police Report.” Some excerpts:
On Feb 22, 2004, a car hit an owl on Highway 125 north of Walden. The owl then perched on the car’s mirror and screeched at the driver. After spewing out a great deal of fowl language, the owl flew off.
On Jan. 25, 2003, an individual reported losing a cell phone that was later found in his dog’s mouth. Wonder why the dog didn’t come when he was called?
On Sept. 12, 1998, a person lodged a fishhook in his own ear. EMTs performed a lobe-otomy.
These are actual incidents taken from the Police Report as published in The Jacks
on County Star newspaper over eight years in Walden, Colorado. I owned the newspaper at the time and used my wit (some would say only half my wit) to put a hometown twist on the often mundane work of a rural police department and my own interpretation on the sometimes ridiculous calls made to the local sheriff’s office.
I am a journalist who has won a ton of awards for writing and reporting, including state and national awards for my humor column. The best compliment I
ever received for No Humans Were Hurt was this: “I can sit down in the bathroom, pick up the book and open it to any page and start reading. It makes my morning.”
The second-best compliment I ever received was from a police detective in Sacramento, California. He said that they used to post the weekly Police Report on the duty board. “It reminded us that there was a place in the world where the worst thing that happened on any given day was cows on the highway,” he explained.
Dog Tales
Have You Lost Your Best Friend? I don’t read dogs books that end with the dog dying. I know how that feels. But my wife was one of those people who took the death of one of our dogs particularly hard. So I started writing these stories to console her. The dogs in my stories don’t die, or at least they don’t die in the normal sense of the word
We all know that dogs are special creatures indeed, and they may, or probably should go to special places after death. “Dog Tales” will take you to some of those places.
Here you will find Buck, who was a coward in life but something much, much more in death; and Jake, whose love for h
is mistress transcended time and space; and Sam, who was not exactly sent on a mission from God, but it was a heavenly task; and Wrecks, just a big silly galoot of a dog with no apparent purpose in life, or so it seemed. You’ll meet those dogs and others in seven stories that burst from the imagination (and a little bit of real life) of Jim Dustin, certified dog lover.
(P.S. Your dog would want you to buy this book )
How Frank the Dog Saved the World … and later, the Galaxy
This is a story that could happen tomorrow.
We know there are perhaps 8 billion Earth-like worlds in just our own galaxy. It’s not hard to imagine many of them produced intelligent life, and such life might be technologically far in advance of ours.
There is also evidence that aliens may have visited our planet and meddled in our affairs in the distant past. Well, suppose they return and don’t like the way we’ve turned out? You could wake up one morning, turn on the news, and find out aliens have landed on the White House lawn and are about to put all of humanity on trial.
And our star witness, the only creature on the planet the aliens will allow us to present as a witness, is a dog. Far-fetched, you might say with a chuckle. But this is serious. Your dog might speak well for humanity, but what about that guy down the street who chains up his dog so it has to lie out in the hot sun all day? Or the puppy mill owner who drowns the little ones that won’t sell because of cosmetic defects? Or the owners who take their dog far out in the country to dump it on some lonely road to be killed and eaten by coyotes?
What if the aliens call on one of those dogs to speak for humanity?
Well, they did. They called on Frank, and this is his story.
Tales of Startlement
Here’s a list of those stories:
Surveillance: If you think the government is intrusive now, wait until the near future comes along.
The Hall of Tiles: The High Sheriff had a perfect scheme to set himself up for life. But someone else had a more perfect scheme.
Squirrels: How are we to determine if distant planets are safe to colonize? Send a few brave souls ahead; see if they come home.
Promontory: In a parallel universe, a northern army threatens Rome.
Futility: A planet ready to die pinpoints Earth as its safe haven, but Earth is already occupied.
Routines: Doing the same thing day after day could be hazardous to your health.
The Wendigo: Was it really something in the woods causing all this anguish?
The Revenge of Angus McFee: Don’t ever, ever interrupt a golfer’s stroke, even if you are an alien.
The North Park Golf Association Rules of Golf
Okay, I’m a hacker, you’re a hacker, we’re all hackers. So why are we playing under the same rules as the best golfers in the world? This handbook will give you peace of mind and freedom from stress as you venture out onto the links.
How to Purchase:
Each book listed above is $15, including shipping and handling. Send a check or money order (we don’t take credit cards) to:
Dustin Books, Box 307, Walden, Colorado, 80480.
Easy Peasy.
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Logical Conclusions
Volume I
Essays on America
The chapters cover the following subjects:
American Government 101; Schools don’t teach this anymore, but if they did, we’d have better voters.
Our Weird, Weird World; One essay deals with the behavior police and their rules for hiking. Hint: elk don’t do this, so why should you?
We Muse on the News; So why don’t rich people who say rich people should pay more but don’t pay more in taxes? Nothing’s stopping them from doing that.
Sports; There are only two sports remaining where one can, or indeed is encouraged, to drink while playing.
Dog Tales; I live in a town where dogs are so loved and admired we may give them the right to vote.
Space and Science; The next gold rush will occur in outer space, where a single asteroid could be worth $100 trillion.
The Gopher Relays: Can’t describe this. You have to read the chapter.
Useful History; What did they do about pirates in the 18th Century? We actually didn’t win the Crusades, so Muslims shouldn’t be angry about them. And a school forgot about Christmas.
Government Finances; If this chapter doesn’t frost your eyebrows, you probably don’t pay taxes.
We Get Mail: These columns come out of a newspaper I once owned. Naturally, I got a lot of mail.
Driving Us Crazy; Why I don’t go abroad – ever – and other vacation tips.
Logical Conclusions
Volume II
Essays on America
The chapters cover the following subjects:
Lawsuits: These are actual lawsuits that were actually allowed in our actual courts. The only way this chapter could be stranger is if it listed lawsuits so absurd they weren’t allowed in any courts.
Hunting and Fishing: I live in a small drinking town with a hunting and fishing problem.
Weather: This includes a column about the benefits of climate change, an angle most news reports ignore. And why we here in Walden, Colorado, are in favor of global warming.
Politics: The first column is about my abortive attempt to run for President of the United States. Another is what we should learn from the Greeks. And here you will meet Abdullah Oblongata.
Internet English: This is the Age of the Text. So why do so many of these texters not know basic English? Sadly, examples abound.
Technology: I’ve suggested several new inventions we need. If you fly a lot, you’ll like the Fleshomatic.
EEKs: Hope you’re not one.
Health: You don’t realize the value of an eye until you’ve lost one.
Advertising: Prepare yourself for a couple of trips with Gullible’s Travels, and other instances of questionable marketing.
Bureaucracies: If learning about what our government workers are actually doing doesn’t drop you into a state of depression, you might be heavily medicated.
Human Behavior: None of these columns seemed to fit anywhere else, like what if the passage of an asteroid made us all smarter?