In which the nudity festival is recapped, the Division of Insurmountable Fear has good news, we hear from the Division of Gleep Glorp, the Division of Adult Diversion enjoys unexpected success, the shareholders write in to complain about Denny, the Division of True Neutral is announced, the Kakos University School of Social Justice has a new development, and we hear about Mary Handy’s new baby girl.

Transcript:

What you are about to hear may not be what you intended to hear, but, just maybe, it’s what you need to hear.

Hello and welcome to the Kakos Industries Shareholder announcements. My name is Corin Deeth III, and I am CEO of Kakos Industries. I like to take the time to do these announcements myself because it’s important to me that all of you know what Kakos Industries is doing, as you are the reason that we do what we do. Also, it is a mandatory part of my job description. I will emphasize that these announcements are strictly for Kakos Industries Shareholders. If you aren’t a shareholder in Kakos Industries, then “die.” No, wait, I’m sorry, the code word is “bubblegum.” Bubblegum. Okay, now that they are all gone, we can continue.

This broadcast is coming to you from right behind you. Don’t look! If you look, what you see behind you may change the way that you see life, the universe, and everything else. The laws of physics will begin to come apart in your brain as you witness a deeper truth about the cosmos than any human is prepared for. If you’re not human, then just replace the word human with whatever it is that you are. Star being or whatever. I can assure you that the statement holds true for all known residents of the Milky Way. Undoubtedly, some of you have looked behind you to see where the sound is coming from as your curiosity cannot be so easily buried. It is best not to tell anyone what you have seen because they may look at you differently from that time on. The problems of your life just prior to witnessing the anomalous activity will seem to disappear entirely, as though they couldn’t possibly matter now, but they will leave in their wake a much deeper and much more dangerous set of fears. No one you know will understand this new pain that you carry, and it will be impossible for you to satisfactorily explain what you have gone through to them. It is best if you just try to forget, and push on with your life as you wait to die. Those of you who have not looked back should be encouraged not to do so, even if you begin to feel fingers on your neck, or hear whispers that seem to say, “Hey! Look at me!” It is merely your subconscious trying to fool you now that I have primed it to do so. You’re welcome. In addition, one lucky Kakos Industries shareholder has none of the horrors just described waiting behind him or her, but instead one much much worse. Behind one of you out there, sitting in a chair, is me with a pistol. If you look, I will shoot you. Also, those are some good-ass cookies you’ve got in your kitchen.

Last week was the nudity festival. I have to say it was fun. Fridays at Kakos Industries are usually a dress down sort of day, except for once a month when we all wear our fanciest codpieces and nothing else. Last friday, however, every employee came into work in the nude, as they were instructed in the employee newsletter. In many ways, this was an exciting experience. In many others, it was completely distracting. Department heads struggled to keep their heads, and also their employees on task, and we had at least one messy bit of cleanup when a couple of employees attempted to photocopy themselves having sex, and broke the glass in the scanner. We had to issue an Evil Writ of No Touchie that stayed in effect until the end of the work day, but not even that kept the employees from absentmindedly touching themselves, and then touching everything else in the office. In unrelated news, we ran out of Lysol. At the end of the work day, all of the Kakos Industries employees at the main branch and many of you shareholders filtered down into the basement ballroom, which was decorated with a certain Biblical Garden theme. The buffet table featured a variety of apples for consumption and many books filled with a tremendous amount of knowledge. At first, everyone seemed to behave themselves and pretend that they weren’t all standing around in the nude, you know, reading a book or two, trying to look disinterested, not examining the interesting pubic topiaries that their coworkers had created for the occasion, but then a loud moan of one variety or another was heard by all and things pretty much just went to hell after that. Not literally, I should add. Though the laborers in hell rarely wear clothing due to the heat, no one was sent to hell that night. I just mean that people started to have a lot of sex in the basement ballroom. It is a good thing that there are a number of drains installed in the basement ballroom floor. The festivities that night gave us an opportunity to debut the platinum-encased couple who died while filming a sex tape to show off the Kakos Industries New Hole. We’re calling the statue The Beast with Two Backs and One and a Half Spines.

Next week is the celebration of technology. Much like the agriculture festival, the technology festival features the most important and technologically advanced developments from all of our clients and from within Kakos Industries itself, as they vie to destroy each other and the rest of the festival. I would encourage you not to attend the festivities if you value your life, unless you happen to be a level 16 or higher mech pilot with your own giant robot, or you have no corporeal form to destroy. I’m looking at the list of shareholders ordered by levels of metaphysical opacity, and it seems that no one currently holding shares in Kakos Industries is truly ethereal, though we do have a lot of shareholders with phantom pains and at least one shareholder with completely transparent skin. Last year’s festival, as some of you may remember, ended in a tie when the Thorgonus Squid Bot machine and the Giant-Ass Fighting Dragon from Giant-Ass Robots to Kick in Your Face simultaneously destroyed each other, the entire fairgrounds, and the tiny moon of Jupiter that we hold this particular festival on. It seems that these two mighty contenders will be looking forward to a rematch, and Kakos Industries will be looking for yet another place to hold the festival. We’ve placed a giant photograph of the moon in orbit around jupiter, which will fool the astronomical community at least for the time being. We’ve got a couple of decades at least before manned space travel makes it out there.

The Division of Insurmountable Fear has developed what they consider to be the most frightening thing yet conceived. I must admit that when I first heard about this development, I was extremely curious what this new, most frightening thing is. Their developments in the past have brought us things like total sudden sensory deprivation, and being trapped on a thing really really high in the air, so they have set the bar extremely high. I went down to the lab to see what it is that they have developed earlier this week, and I must tell you that it is most certainly a contender. Just on the other side of what appeared to be numerous layers of protective glass and two giant pits was a creature of such unimaginable horror that even HP Lovecraft would have struggled to find the words not to describe it. Shareholders, it seems that the scientists at the DIF have taken what was originally an ordinary Hippopotamus and they gave it body armor and rocket launchers. That’s it. I felt myself begin to tremble at the sight of the beast. What is commonly known as the most vicious and most dangerous animal to ever come across in the wild was standing before us with its only known weaknesses completely erased, and new strengths granted. The animal stomped ferociously, terrorizing the other animals in the cage, and the two scientists studying it. The ground inside of its cage was covered with accidentally released human and animal waste. I don’t know if any of you listening have ever seen a hippopotamus cackle with glee, but it would be best if you never have the opportunity. The image has been haunting me. There is nothing you can do to stop this animal from taking your life, and there is also nothing you can do to make this animal feel any hint of remorse after doing so. Around such a monster, your life is forfeit. We are currently researching a way to add a radio to the hippopotamus’s body armor so that perhaps we can deliver these announcements to you with the undeniable gravitas that they deserve.

We have news from the Division of Gleep Glorp. They write, “Gleep Glorp Glee. Gleep gleep ping wing pong, gleep glor ping pong wing. Ablooey blonk, Glee gleep. Glorp gleep Gling Long Leep. Pooty yooty Zong tay lee, bolorpty way, rontantootle tay. A filoriam Ploeus ponk, gleep glorp glee, gleep glorp fonk. Ip zip coo on way, blakikikikiki. Dolokip plickip pay, gleepidy gloo glomp glom glomp glomp. Tu aminie ret baloo, ak ak ak booey sug moo moo. Hoomey dooie ackimenoo, awm ticki walala oobey don zonk. Gleep glorp Glee, Gleep Glorp Ping.” Ah, that is very enlightening.

As you may remember, we somewhat unexpectedly, but completely necessarily, closed down the Adult Entertainment Branch two weeks ago. We were unable to leave the void left by the AEB empty for too long though, as its function was just too important. We decided to fill that hungry gap with the Division of Adult Diversion, introduced last time. Their experimental penis enlargement cream has left all of the test subjects so enormously well endowed that they are of no use to anyone. Truly, these new enhanced penises are too large to fit into any human orifice, require more than two hands to grip effectively, and require more blood to stiffen than the human body can offer up. Yet men have been volunteering like crazy for the project. In fact, if the numbers I have in front of me are correct, then this is the largest experiment in Kakos Industries history, and we don’t even keep records for whether or not people actually want to be a part of them. All of these men are consenting to their own downfall, and enthusiastically so. We didn’t even lie to them. They can see the people leaving the building in sweatpants, so they know exactly what they are getting into. And yet their smiles never fade, or at least not yet. Perhaps there is something here in a yet unexamined part of the male psyche that can explain all of this.

I have news from the Division of Philosophical Sabotage. It seems that they have now started receiving a number of letters themselves from concerned shareholders about the prospect of being Denny, our human brain immersed in a false digital reality. I can assure you that if they received your letter, then you are not Denny. However, if you received a response, then you may still be Denny as we have to keep up the illusion. Several shareholders have even demanded to see Denny, thinking that something so complex as Denny can’t possibly exist in the digital realm also. Surely such recursion would require infinite amounts of space. Honestly, shareholders, who do you think you’re dealing with? We don’t have to recreate Denny inside of Denny’s world, we just have to fool Denny into thinking that Denny exists in Denny’s world. It’s certainly much cheaper. Perhaps some of you are still uncomfortable with this whole Denny thing. Let’s do a thought experiment, shall we? Who is Denny? Well, Denny is probably a shut-in, because that would make things easier for us, right? Denny probably doesn’t have many human interactions, because that would also make things easier, right? Less processing power. And Denny probably doesn’t change much or achieve much, right? Those things take effort for us to program. So I really only need to ask you one question. Do we like doing things the easy way here at Kakos Industries? Without a doubt, we do things the evil way.

Sometimes evil is too evil. What was that? You heard me correctly. While this is not the opinion held by Kakos Industries at-large, and certainly not the opinion I hold myself, it is the opinion held by several of our clients. In an effort to serve them better while increasing global evil, we have a number of new services to help maintain that oh-so-desirable true neutral alignment. At the individual level, this may be as simple as taking a couple dollars from that woman’s purse before you run after her to tell her she left it behind. At the corporate level, these things are much more difficult to appropriately calibrate. For one of our client’s businesses helping to rebuild impoverished communities in war torn countries, we spent some time making sure that every tool at their disposal was created impoverishing another country. Surely there is a balancing act with knowing just how much extra evil is produced by helping one group through hurting another, and so the second group is never quite as impoverished as the first. It’s a tricky process for sure. We have opened the doors at the Division of True Neutral, and we expect quite a few new clients will come to us looking to balance out the good that they do.

We have exciting news from the Kakos University School of Social Justice. It seems that our professor of freshman Social Change, Professor Higgins, has finally redefined every word in the English dictionary to include some sort of power dynamic to be resisted. This came after Professor Higgins discovered the concept of “punching up”, the notion that humor itself could be redefined to include this social power dynamic. Professor Higgins says that the authors using the term have laughed in the face of years of philosophical argument, and more recently neuropsychology, and redefined the word to suit their questionable purpose. It’s not funny when you laugh down, they claim. Seeing this as a stroke of genius, Professor Higgins began work immediately, filling the dictionary with unnecessary complications. For example, Irony is now defined as “the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically to shame and subjugate the lower class.” Play is now defined as “engaging in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose, on top of the land you stole from the natives.” Reason itself is now defined as “a cause, explanation, or justification for taking away the rights and livelihoods of the oppressed peoples.” This will certainly muddy the important conversations ahead, and Professor Higgins should be commended. Professor Higgins, we will reconsider granting you tenure… next year.

We have some news about Mary Handy’s baby girl. In case you’ve forgotten because anything to do with children and procreation disgusts you so intensely as to skip your long term memory, Mary Handy is one of our employees here at Kakos Industries. She gave birth at her desk during her shift because we didn’t want to interrupt her work with things like maternity leave or ambulances. As a result, her child was born on the premises, and as a result is 30% our child here at Kakos Industries. We named 30% of the child also. Mary filled in the blanks, and I am proud to announce that little Karawack Handy was born. That’s K-A-R-A-W-A-C-K H-A-N-D-Y. Looking at the birth certificate here, it appears as though there’s a smudge in between Karawack and Handy. No, I’m sorry, that is one-third of the letter R. Her middle name is one-third of the letter R. That is precious, and mathematically accurate. It seems that Mary decided 30% was referring to the total number of letters, which is acceptable, as is 30% of total area in bold-faced Kakos Industries Hell-vetica font. It seems that Mary Handy ran into some trouble while nursing the child. What she perhaps failed to realize is that her child is also 30% the genetic offspring of Kakos Industries as a whole. This isn’t honestly something we try to do, it just kind of happens. It has to do with radiation or something. At any rate, the child couldn’t be satisfied with any amount of human breast milk, and had to be rushed to Kakos Industries to drink from the teat of pure evil. While the child is still too young to drink directly from the Matmos that resides under the Kakos Industries main branch, Grace Rule, the contracts master here at Kakos Industries, serves as the wet nurse for all of the evil children that we produce. I don’t actually know what Grace Rule is, or more specifically what she has become over the years, but I’m not sure what these children would do without her. Of course, Karawack’s mother will be able to provide her with most of her nutrition, but Grace will have to fill the gap to make sure that Karawack grows into the strapping young being of evil that she is supposed to be.

There is only one thing worse than taking credit for things that you didn’t do, and that’s taking credit for things that you did do, which are also really really bad things to do. This is Things We’re Taking Credit for Now. This week we’re taking credit for #YOLO, using the acronym YOLO to justify any actions of any kind, and the movie You Only Live Twice, which, if we’re being honest, is racist as fuck. If you happen to disagree with anything we’ve taken credit for this week, then you really will only live once, and your time is almost up. And… Now. You’re done.

13-year-old Danny Morton has won this week’s Ruin-A-Life Drawing. Danny has selected his mother, Angela Whitney-Morton, to have her life ruined. This was another unique case for the Wheel of Misery. It refused to turn, and subsequently refused to pass judgment at all. While many of you might assume that the Wheel of Misery has some sympathy for the difficulty of being a mother, this is not the case. The Wheel of Misery, it seems, has deemed that it cannot possibly do worse to this woman than having such a terrible fucking child will continue to do. For good measure, Danny Morton will also be left alone. Each of us lives in a hell of our own making. Please enjoy roasting in yours, Danny.

That brings us to the end of this week’s broadcast. I hope that you enjoyed yourself. I know that I did. In order to destroy whatever it is that is currently bringing your broadcast to you, it is important that you yell as loudly as possible “YOU DON’T EXIST! YOU DON’T EXIST! THERE IS NOTHING THERE AT ALL LEAVE ME ALONE.” If you have done this correctly, then you will suddenly feel very alone. This is, again, because I have psychologically primed you to feel that way. In the event that you are the lucky shareholder who actually has me sitting behind you, I will see myself out, but I might take another cookie before I go.

Here are the numbers.

1,999,996
1,999,997
1,999,998
1,999,999
1,999,999.5

Kakos Industries is written and produced by Conrad Miszuk, who is also the voice of Corin Deeth. The introduction is read by Kim Aiello, and the credits are read by Hanna Jones. Check out KakosIndustries.com for more episodes. There’s also transcriptions if you’d rather read the Kakos Industries announcements. That’s K-A-K-O-S-I-N-D-U-S-T-R-I-E-S dot com.

If you’re feeling down after this broadcast, have you considered a nice glass of herbal tea?