Utoya77
radioblatteweb

Radioblattaweb

I've been working at a web radio for a year now, a small station that broadcasts over the internet.

My boss still calls it a free radio because he's stuck in the eighties, nineties - same difference - and he always reminds me of it, especially those times we hit a snag or when I choose a track that he has to buy on iTunes because he doesn't have it in memory - ninety cents - he reminds me after he's finished whining about the birth of his free radio.

I'm free in this job too, in the sense that he pays me, or rather, contributes to my monthly bus pass, and that's it. So, I’m free to leave whenever I want because I don’t have a contract and there’s no salary. But that's fine, when I finish my thesis, I'll leave this shithole of a warehouse that serves as the headquarters of the free web radio.

The most fun part of this job is that it only takes up one or two afternoons a week, not more because soon I’ll support my studies with more serious and ‘lucrative’ activities, and besides, I also have to coach kids once or twice a week and Saturday or Sunday there’s a match for my hometown’s rugby team, then I need to keep up with guitar practice because I’m in an alternative grunge rock band, meaning we ‘alternately’ swap instruments or places to play. As you can see, I'm very busy and that's why I don't have a girlfriend, I wouldn’t know where to fit her in, the week flies by and then there’s the thesis... I think I won’t graduate this year. Anyway, as I was saying, I work at a web radio, the place isn’t really shitty, there’s all the necessary equipment: three professional headphones and three microphones (three is the perfect number, says the boss who, above all, is also a cautious guy because if we forget to charge the ‘gelato’ - that’s what those types of microphones are called - there’s another one ready) we also have an old computer running cracked programs by the boss, who’s an IT expert and knows about this junk, I don’t care, the technical part is his job; I handle the program of music, culture, and news. I was saying we work in a warehouse and that’s the most annoying part of this activity, I mean, it’s not nice arriving at the warehouse door passing under clotheslines and walking next to the grass as tall as if we were in a savannah, and when I tell him - but don’t you ever cut this grass? - he always repeats, - next week! - That’s why I’ve never brought my friends from the band here, I’m embarrassed for them to see this shithole, but when I’m in front of my desk with headphones on and the microphone on in front of my notes, I only see the lights of the monitors and equipment and forget about the shit around me.

I was saying I work at a web radio and manage a column on music, culture, and news. This week the theme was: love, sex, and hard rock, but last week I dealt with the same theme and the one before that too... well, these topics draw attention. Sometimes I leave questions for the regular listeners who then write to me on the radio’s Facebook page and, in a few days, I reply. For a long time, the question had been successful: ‘how dudes who listen to Coldplay have sex?’ I mean, how do guys who listen to Coldplay have sex? I think I'll continue with this theme because it's very popular, I just need to decide which band to refer to, these are delicate matters my boss is very attentive to, the largest group of listeners are his 'salsa and rumba' friends, these Coldplay they don’t even know who they are, let alone if I put up on Facebook: ‘how dudes who listen to Black Sabbath have sex?’ That should be more age-appropriate for them, right?

In the end, I think I'll fall back on ACDC and see what happens... after all, my boss only goes on Facebook to ‘like’ his wife’s page.

Anyway, I found it strange that the boss had left the warehouse open. When it happened that I arrived first, his grumpy-wife-chomp would open the gate for me and then I waited, in front of the closed door, whether it was cold, hot, cloudy, rainy... that afternoon, for some reason, I tried turning the handle and, oops, the door was open.

Now I'm here like an idiot and I don’t know what to do, he could arrive at any moment.

Moving the mouse, out of habit, a strange cryptomarket page came up on the screen with images of weapons and ammunition, stuff from video games, only from the prices listed in dollars they all seem real to me, nothing toy-like!

What do I do? Was that a Deep Web or Darknet or whatever the hell they are called...

Of course, I go back outside and wait for him as if I hadn't seen anything. I imagine my boss being part of an armed group, or worse, being in a criminal organization, a gang of thugs robbing around small provincial towns and then hiding living like insects, cockroaches, like cockroaches in the web.

I can't and don’t want to recount what happened that afternoon, I call it like the refrain of a track I've included many times in the nighttime programming: ‘Everybody's got to learn sometime’. In short, we all need to learn!

I can only say that, when choosing the right name for my new radio, it seemed to me that radioblattaweb was perfect.