In which the Agriculture Festival is recapped, we prepare to remember the underwater colony Kakolantis, the adult entertainment branch experiments with pulse patterns, a Sad Burrito is developed, the Division of Desperation is introduced, and Jan Stan wins the Ruin a Life drawing.

Transcript:

What you are about to hear may bring you closer to a feeling of oneness with nature, your surroundings, and the Universe, or it may make you feel more painfully aware of your own individual existence and struggle.

Greetings from Kakos Industries. As you probably know, I am Corin Deeth III, CEO of Kakos Industries. It has been three months now since I took over after the death of my grandfather, and with the exception of a few bumps here and there and one significant failure to bring about the Darkest Universe, I would say that things have been going well for Kakos Industries. Things are only going to get better, though, or worse, depending on your perspective. Either way we make money.

I must remind you as I always do that this broadcast is exclusively for the shareholders of Kakos Industries. If you are listening to this broadcast and you are not a shareholder, then it would be best to avoid hearing any more, and to immediately get blackout drunk. The memory of hearing this broadcast itself contains a virus that will eventually eat away at your subconscious. If you’re not a fan of having to remember to breathe, then it is best to forget you’ve heard anything at all.

This broadcast is coming to you from an echo trapped in a box. We’ve reached the beta stage of our new GMO Echo Tree, the wood of which can contain vibrations indefinitely. The box you’ve received has been crafted from this wood, but as I said, it’s in the beta stages, so there might be some problems. The Echo Tree project is in permanent beta because it will never be improved upon. The Echo Tree forest, located at the Kakos Industries North Branch, recently encountered some difficulties when one staff member murdered all of the other staff members, and burned all of the notes associated with the project. I am told that one staff member stubbed his toe walking through the woods, and his screams of agony echoed for so long, that his own screams drove him mad. The sounds that the trees pick up fade as they pick up new ones, so any screaming that you hear now is not the screaming from a stubbed toe, but the screaming of being mercilessly axe murdered. We have sent in our best body-collectors-who-happen-to-be-deaf, who have successfully retrieved the bodies, but have since complained of a certain cold vibration inside of their bones. Let the Echo Tree Forest be an ever-lasting and stentorian reminder to us all not to enter the Echo Tree Forest.

Last week was the Agriculture Festival, which I was informed I am actually not at liberty to cancel. The Agriculture Festival features the clients of Kakos Industries who work in the agricultural field as they present their best and most exemplary produce. The vast majority of the produce is either genetically modified or of extraterrestrial origin. It is often a competition between the GMOs and the UFOs to see whose produce could destroy the festival first. I am told it was close this year, but the extraterrestrial rhubarb won the competition once again. When Galacton Imports first showed up with their bundle of rhubarb, it was only fifteen pounds. By lunch, it had drawn nearly every bit of moisture from the air around the festival, and had planted roots in the suited men who had delivered it. Nearby, the GMO Giant-Ass tomatoes, delivered by Giant-Ass Foods for Your Face, had begun to swell menacingly. The rhubarb took over several tables, completely devouring the Jackalope Cabbage, and the Thorgon-Eating Plants from the planet Thorgonus. The Giant-Ass Tomatoes had begun to emit spores, eliminating any humans and animals that had not already run from the scene, and turning their corpses into grow beds. The rhubarb covered half of the fairgrounds before running into the Giant-Ass Tomatoes, where the final showdown began. I am told that the Tomatoes fought well, but the rhubarb was immune to spores, acids, bases, ass-based combat, and karate chopping. Eventually, the rhubarb took over the entire fairgrounds, and then we hit it with a nuclear bomb. It is probably best that these competitions take place on one of Earth’s moons, or there might be a danger of biological contamination. You might be wondering which moon of Earth’s we hold this competition on. The easiest way to answer is this: Think of one of Earth’s moons. Not that one.

Next week we have the Water Festival. It will take place at our Pacific location, on a man made island in the middle of the pacific ocean. The Pacific Location of Kakos Industries largely serves as a tax shelter and a dock for our pirating endeavors. This location is constructed on top of what the Division of Divination has told us is most likely the location of a volcanic island at some point. During the water festival, we revisit the horrible failure that is our underwater city, Kakolantis. We built Kakolantis as an experiment into radical forms of society, and the experiment did not go well. We gathered a number of anarcho-captialists, put them into the underwater city with no regulation of any kind, gave them an overpowered private police force, and then we stopped communicating with them at all. We watched, however. The first couple of years were glorious. There was fighting, revolution after revolution. Power flowed seemingly randomly as the market forces inside of Kakolantis drove prices of goods as useless as paper clips into the thousands of dollars, and then into actual negative values. The citizens leveraged and competed until, frankly, they were exhausted. This is when the downfall began. The markets slowed, and eventually faded. The competition for food and survival was eliminated as the prices fell. A small government was set up, and labor was divvied up equally to all. Since then, Kakolantis, or Prosperiana as they have since renamed it, has been a successful community with a legal system that is fair to all, no war or conflict, and a system for removing psychopaths from the population before they can do harm. They are on their second generation born since they lost contact with the surface and everything… everything looks good. Disgusting. The water festival gives us the opportunity to check and make sure that they are still there, and that they haven’t maybe killed each other like we’d hoped. We’ve considered implanting some negative ideas, or maybe just drowning them all, but Kakolantis serves as a necessary scar on Kakos Industries that reminds us why we’re here and why we do what we do. It is, truly, Evil’s Evil.

News from the Adult Entertainment Branch. You may remember that the AEB was working on a New Hole. The project, as we all know, fell through when some people died. The good news is that all of the pornographic materials produced with the new hole have been leaked onto the Internet. Now, this erotic new orifice is out there in the public imagination, but no one can have one. It seems that the potential for profit has been somewhat reduced, but I think we can all rest a little easier knowing that these images will haunt the unsuspecting masturbators of the world for a long time. The AEB has since been working on a new sex toy that will ruin you for other people and other toys. So far, the AEB has developed a couple of new devices, and while some do bring about lasting insensitivity in participants, so far no one has been ruined. I have suggested to the AEB that they might benefit from trying to somehow replace the body parts of the subjects with cybernetic organs that are hypersensitive or tapping directly into the pleasure center of the brain. They told me they would take those suggestions into account, but in the mean time they had discovered a new pulse pattern that just might do it. It is said that no good scientist ever experiments on him or herself. Perhaps this should be a rule at Kakos Industries as well.

The Culinary Division of Kakos Industries has developed a new burrito. This burrito, like many others, will contain meat of some kind, a choice of beans, rice, sour cream, and potentially guacamole. Unlike other burritos, this new burrito will not leave consumers feeling happy and satisfied. Instead, this burrito will replace the elation and fulfillment that diners expect with a sort of dark sinking feeling. Diners will feel tired, but more specifically like they could sleep for days and not care. Those who eat the burrito will no longer be hungry, but they will also not hunger for much of anything in life at all. In fact, the thought of turning on a television streaming service to binge watch their favorite television show will seem laborious and generally not worthwhile. Half an hour into digesting the burrito, a fear will creep in that nothing could ever be enjoyable again, and the daily pain of working and responsibilities will just really not seem worth it. Even imagining escaping these feelings will not satisfy the eaters of the Sad Burrito, because the thought of escaping their pain seems a futile as living with it. Those who have eaten this burrito will sit for what seems like hours just not doing anything but sinking lower in their chairs. And then it will pass. The whole ordeal only lasted 45 minutes, and they had really better get back to work.

The Kakos Industries Division of Motor Vehicles has introduced Windshield Weepers. Unlike windshield wipers, Windshield Weepers serve to moisten the windshield of a car, and just generally make the outside of the vehicle resemble the emotional tumultuousness just inside. We are, of course, speaking of the emotional state of the vehicle itself. Go ahead. Let it all out.

The Valkyrian Division has developed a new type of club. Like most clubs out there, it is a large piece of wood. They have called it the Bludgeoner 3000 and it has been mathematically perfected to cause the most harm in anyone struck by it. Tests have shown that the Bludgeoner 3000 exceeds blood splatter standards by a factor of ten, is 30% easier to swing, and has that nice grip texture not found in nature. The Valkyrian Division has not yet decided with what weapons World War III will be fought, but they want to make sure that World War IV is fought with Kakos Industries sticks and stones.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. It is for this reason that we have created the Division of Desperation. As you may know, research and development can take years for developing even simple products and innovations. We here at Kakos Industries believe that this is because the scientists and engineers involved in the extensive R and D process don’t have the right kind of incentive. For them, developing new polymers or designing new structures might not seem like a matter of life and death, and that is where so much of their energy is wasted. How would you design an inexpensive parachute from available materials better than by giving an engineer ten minutes to do so before being thrown from a plane? What better way to cure radiation poisoning than by partially cooking several radiologists? And don’t worry about distractions like seeing their families and spending what time they have left doing things that they love. That seems a lot like giving up, so we’ve eliminated those possibilities. In fact, if they want to see their loved ones again, then they had better cure their blood disease before the painkillers wear off. If you’ve ever wondered why schools give so much money to science and engineering majors, it’s because we here at Kakos Industries buy them by the dozen.

With the girth of Kakos Industries as it is, it can be impossible sometimes to fully grasp it, or even really get a basic handle on it. One may even want to know the full extent of Kakos Industries, but there’s just not enough room in the human head for all of it. And knowing where it has been or what it has done before is entirely out of the question. Sometimes it is best to just yield to its unmastered importunity and make some conjectures. If the thought hasn’t entered your mind yet, this is Things We’re Taking Credit for Now. As has been said previously, we can’t actually guarantee that these are things we’re responsible for, but we did flip a coin, and that really solidified in our minds how we really felt about the likelihood of our involvement. This week, we are taking credit for Paper Cuts, Stubbed Toes, and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. If you happen to disagree with anything we have taken credit for this week, then please write to us. The letter must be written in your own blood, and a minimum of 100 pages.

The winner of this week’s ruin a life contest is Jan Stan, and thus, her enemy Bob Cobb’s life will be ruined. A spin of the Wheel of Misery lands us on turned blue. This is a pretty simple one, folks. We’re going to turn Bob Cobb blue. It will be a gradual process, but in a year or so it will be undeniable. Bob Cobb will be blue. His new skin tone will fall somewhere between the sky on a summer afternoon in the caribbean and blue curaçao. Friends and family close to Bob Cobb may not immediately notice the difference as his skin changes, but spending a couple of days away and returning will make the change more noticeable. Bob cannot be fired from his job for this, but it will make it more difficult to promote him, the blue freak that he is. Photos taken of Bob will be difficult to alter to make him look more natural, and I am told that any children he has after the change will be partially blue as well. This isn’t just dye; his genetics will be altered to include our brand new Kakos Industries Brilliant Blue gene sequence. And, before you ask, his favorite color is red. Jan Stan tells us that Bob became her enemy when he scraped her car in the parking lot and refused to acknowledge it. We really don’t care, Jan. Like, not at all. We’re not in it for revenge. If you’re curious, and you probably are, in addition to being blue, Bob’s nipples will be even pinker. Good luck, Bob. For good measure, Jan’s nipples will now be blue. Some people are into that. Congratulations on the win.

And this brings us to the end of the broadcast. The numbers that follow are guaranteed to drive you insane if you try to work out a pattern anywhere because they are just so meaningless. We had our guys down at the Division of Metrics come up with a scale of meaninglessness. We’re planning on using it for everything in the future, but for now, we will apply it to these numbers. On the scale of meaninglessness, this number set earned a rating of 16 Camus. Thinking about numbers scoring even 1 Camus of meaninglessness could send a human into a spiralling depression. At a ranking of 8 Camus, one is at risk of being swallowed by literal darkness. At 16 Camus, even just hearing the numbers may change everything forever. Please be careful.

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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 not feeling down?