Review: Space Dandy 1.4 & 1.5

Once more unto the reviews, my friends!

Episode 4: Sometimes You Can't Live With Dying, Baby!
Probably my favorite episode of the series so far. What begins as your fairly typical zombies-in-space-fare becomes an enjoyable romp through an infected hospital and further becomes a humorous denouement wherein the crew and the whole universe, narrator included, has been zombified. The show's bravery in throwing the premise out every week is extremely refreshing and all the Romero references actually serve to strengthen a show whose core conceit is so wishy-washy. Plus, Dandy's horndoggery is reserved to a couple passing jokes, before discarded as wasteful. A fun, amusing and promising episode that smacks pleasantly of Shaun of the Dead.

Episode 5: A Merry Companion is a Wagon in Space, Baby.
What's this? A sentimental episode? A sentimental episode with a three-dimensional female character? Sure, this episode's Adelé gets ever so slightly damseled towards the episode's end, but I revoke my earlier statement and declare this episode my favorite. When the Aloha Oe gets impounded, Dandy's forced to take the childlike alien he's just caught to the Public Registration Office via public transit, prompting a bonding road-trip between hunter and prey. This episode could've come straight out of Cowboy Bebop, a fact even the music – twangy, acoustic guitar – seems aware of. Plus, zero comically sexist Dandy in this one!

The Review So Far
Just as I was going sour on the series, it noticeably improves. This most recent episode not only did away with the usual sexist bullshit, but also with the unnecessary villains lurking in the background that never quite seem to catch the protagonists. I was beginning to imagine the whole Gogol Empire plot was simply a parody of itself, with the Vicious-esque villain who's far too dramatic for the series he's trapped in. Whatever the case may be, I hope the series continues on this upward trend, though this most recent episode seems much more likely to be a flute.

Thanks for reading and hey – download my new short story!

Battery Low (January Short Story)
Orla the Town remembers a time before the impact, the event that killed billions and blanketed the world with snow. Orla the Man, the ghost town's only remaining inhabitant, does not. It's been one hundred tally marks since he's seen another human being and, when he does, he must face the all-important question; has he lost his mind in isolation?

Battery Low is a post-apocalyptic tale about snow, solitude and an earth frozen over.

$0.99 on Amazon and Smashwords!

Battery Low

My new short story comes out tomorrow!

In an effort to flood the Internet with the exciting, new Timothy J. Meyer content that it's begging for, I've started writing a series of short stories, one a month, for the year 2014. Each month, I take the same handle and a new genre and attempt to spin as different a tale as I possibly can.

January's Genre:

Post-Apocalypse

The Handle:

"Water has absconded with Fire. At the behest of Earth, Wind must give chase."

January's Story

Battery Low, a post-apocalyptic tale about snow, solitude and an earth frozen over.

Available February 1st for download on Amazon and Smashwords!

Here's an excerpt, just for you, my loyal readers:

da da dum dum da 

The town named Orla, Texas elected to sleep in, snugly wrapped in its blanket of downy white. The man named Orla, Texas could afford no such luxury and was awake with the dawn. Plentiful chores this morning. Plentiful chores every morning. 

Sleep could consistently be counted as Orla the Man's enemy. An enemy he was obliged to invite into his home every evening, granted, but an murderous foe nonetheless. He'd first witnessed sleep's homicidal tendencies during his mother's reign. A little shut-eye had, come dawn's early light, cemented a vagabond's corpse to the spare mattress with morning's hoarfrost. His mother, if Orla could recall properly, was forced to burn both man and mattress together, they became so inseparable. 

What was his mother's name? She surely had one and it surely wasn't Orla. This many years distant, details became as fuzzy and indistinct as the horizon line. 

As with every other morning, shoveling announced itself as this particular morning's first and most frequent chore. The previous night's snowfall conspired to plug all of Orla the Town's passages and the task fell to Orla the Man to clear those passages, by hook or crook. The surest antidote against sleep's enervating drain was physical activity, was red blood pumping through busy veins, and he was glad of the exercise. 

dur da dee da dum 

Pecos. He remembered now; his mother's name was Pecos. Pecos, the mother and Orla, the son. The knowledge, the confirmation that his mother belonged to an earlier time, was lucky enough to retain her human name, warms Orla more than any physical exertion might. 

Venturing outside reunited Orla the Man with two more of his ancestral enemies. The sleep was a foe masquerading as a friend. The damp was a henchman of the true danger. It was the cold who was the wolf at the door, the monster whose fangs gnawed ceaselessly at the edges of Orla's the Town's fortifications and Orla the Man's toes and fingers. 

The cold clenched one's lungs. The cold coated one's teeth. The cold insinuated itself gratingly between the joints like shards of ground glass. Sleep was treacherous, damp was parasitic but the cold was thick with evil, with constrictive white hands and vile black thoughts. It was against the cold everything was buttressed and safeguarded, the reason for all the precautions and the vigilance, the capital e Enemy that killed half the world.

Download, read, rate, review, recommend?