“You don’t really have any shame, do you?” Tapp asked, leaning against the office door frame.

Rex just kept idly clicking at his computer, in the regular pattern that it always made when he played solitaire. “You’ve given me at least six speeches about integrity in the last month alone, but even you have to admit that this one is bullshit.”

“Passing off an old product as new? That’s not bullshit?”

“The word ‘product’ implies that people paid for it, and it’s a ‘best of’, people do that all the time.”

“We don’t. And I’m tired of your halfassing the easiest job in the world, I’m going straight to Bubbles with this one.”

“Yuuuup, have fun convincing him to eliminate your job.”

Tapp stormed out, middle finger held up, an extremely common sight in the offices of DropBear Radio.

What had started as a group of friends collecting music had turned into a college radio show- eventually picked up by broadcast.com, exploring new styles and picking up fans. When Broadcast left the picture, it was a small market yet bigger time- a real radio show, a solid 4-hour block.

That, however, was several years ago, but their high point hadn’t been forgotten. After several name changes, the one that stuck for the terrestrial radio show was DropBear Radio, due to their now specialty, the latest in the new genre of dubstep. While both radio and the genre suffered, DropBear managed to live on by shedding employees and downsizing office space to the skeleton crew that had started the whole thing. Gone was the radio show, but their reach was once again worldwide with the introduction of their podcast. Four hours long, just like the radio show, but this time one of the songs was a duplicate, hence the argument and threat of the day.


As he left Rex’s office, Tapp inevitably crossed paths with Gourdaux, the alarmingly overweight and intoxicated teamster of indiscriminate origin- technically not a couch potato, he was rather closer to the cantaloupe family. “You should really stop yelling all the time, man. It’s awful for your bones.”
Tapp sneered, less concerned about playing games with that loser today. “That… makes no sense.”

“Sure it does, because if you don’t stop yelling about getting us all fired, I’m gonna break ‘em.”

This was extremely strange coming from someone who typically didn’t care if visiting guests accidently sat upon him. Tapp stayed quiet, letting the drunkard explain.

“You’re seriously going to risk all our jobs over one repeated song? Rex even made me look it up and pick it, it’s from out least downloaded episode. The Christmas jam sucked pretty hard.”

“I’m not risking all of our jobs, I’m risking Rex’s job, there’s a big difference.”
Gordeaux downed his 11th airline mini-bottle of vodka for that day. It was a very uneconomical way to get drunk. “Don’t act like you’re the real talent, or the starmaker around here- Bubbles doesn’t give a shit about any of us, he’ll just shut the entire operation down.”

“This is different. Rex has been cutting corners for too long.”
Gordaux just shifted, and cracked another bottle. “Keep in mind that some of us have familys to think of.”

“I… didn’t know you had a family.”

“I mean, I assume.”


Tapp agonized all night about it, but eventually he decided that he simply couldn’t live in the purgatory of it all anymore- if he couldn’t fix things, he’d break them all to pieces. At least then he’d HAVE to get off his ass and find something else to do, no matter how demeaning. He hit send, and browsed job listings for a while before getting seriously depressed and going to bed.

The next morning, the fight started early, then calmed, then repeated itself again- Tapp and Rex fought the was only old friends can, both furious but unwilling to actually hurt each other, they took it out on the office, only to get tired, agree that Bubbles was probably going to show up today, and began putting the office back together, un-flipping desks, and inevitably flipping them all again.
What they didn’t realize is that with only two desks and a couch that neither of them were able to flip, especially with Gordeaux on it, the office was easily put back together in the time in took for someone to get buzzed in, walk up the stairs, and enter the office. Because nobody ever visited the offices, it was always either a delivery man or Burt Robles.
Burt thought he was better than everyone in that office, that it was his job to just show up, drop off a cultural grant check from the city, see that the office still exists, then leave with a snide comment. At least, the workers of DropBear radio assumed. Because he was there for all of five minutes every six months, it was difficult to know exactly how to make fun of their vague teasing government man. His suit was nondescript- not the black and white funeral garb or FBI wear, and no consistency of color, leaving them to figure how one could twist his name into something.

“Hey there everyone! Heard the best-of, I loved it!” he said immediately, his arms outstretched.

Rex stared daggers at Tapp.

“Just kidding! Tapp told me all about it, rough to hear you guys are having a hard time booking talent, or dropping bass, or whatever it is that’s holding you guys up. But not to worry, I’ve got it all figured out.”

“We’re not changing formats. Or the name.” Rex said immediately, making sure to draw the line in the sand immediately.

“Oh, for sure not.” Bubbles said, waving his hands. “Pretty sure the opposite! I didn’t read it all just yet, but I filed the paperwork, I think you guys are going to have to stick with the name and format for good at this point- I guess you can do new artists too, I’d have to check- gimme a best of for a month or two until I figure out for sure though.”

Tapp had just been watching from the corner, and was now trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. Bubbles went on.

“See, it was actually getting a bit strange to submit a grant request to the cultural board for a dubstep podcast, kinda seems…. Specific to one period of time almost, right?” he’d say, looking around as if that was a great compliment. “Well that’s why… dun dun dun dun!” he said delivering fanfare as he pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “You guys are now a historical landmark and business! Frozen rent, same grant money, and a little job security to boot. “

Rex squinted, looking like he was about to say something, but didn’t.
“Guys, I know you’re going to nail this. Anyway, I got a lot of these to hand out, stay…. Dubby? I guess?” he just said with a shrug as he walked down the stairs, the door swinging closed behind him.

Tapp looked at Rex. “Did we just get called irrelevant and damned to a life of even greater monotony?”

Rex took a deep breath, and looked like he was going to give a speech, but didn’t. He waved Tapp off, and went to his office. Later that evening though, he stopped Tapp on his way out. “Hey. I got an email today.”

“Bubbles says we all have to walk on our hands all day.”

“It’s a fan letter. Can you remember the last time we got one?”

Rex handed over his phone and let Tapp read the heartfelt message. “Sweet, isn’t it? People still care about what we do, you know.”

“Yeah…. Yeah, I guess as long as what we’re doing matters to some people, all the bullshit is… well, it’s still bullshit, but at least we’re reminded that it’s not totally pointless. What’d you say back to that guy?”

“What? No, nothing. If I write back he’ll think we’re a bunch of losers who have the time to read fan mail.”