in which the Fire Celebration is recapped, the division of labor has exciting news, the department of Funk Pharmaceuticals has developed a solution to the biggest headaches, animal testing is resumed, and Marilyn Cooper wins the Ruin a Life Contest.

Transcript:

What you are about to hear is a bucket being filled one drop at a time.

Hello and welcome to the broadcast newsletter for Kakos Industries. I am Corin Deeth III, CEO of Kakos Industries. These announcements have been going over extremely well, I am proud to say. If I’m reading this graph correctly, it appears that Evil is way up. Way, way up. I’m not sure what the other axis means, however. They say there is a special circle of Hell for those who do not label their axes. I can confirm this is true because I had it built.

Today’s broadcast is coming to you on a preprogrammed synthesizer/sequencer brought to you by Synth-Aesthesia. If you’re hearing and/or seeing this broadcast, then that means you followed the directions and pressed play. I can’t say exactly how long it took to program a synthesizer/sequencer to accurately reproduce the sound and color of my voice reading this very broadcast, but I can say that we lost at least one intern in the process. I should caution you that if you try to sample anything you hear on this synthesizer before the broadcast is over, or “bite” any of the lyrics or sounds, then you will actually be bitten by one of our brand new GMO Bite Wolves. They have ten thousand teeth! And they can also hear the transistors in your computer to determine if you’ve sampled anything. If you hear a low growl outside your window at any point during this broadcast, do not be alarmed. It is just one of the Bite Wolves ensuring complete compliance. If you hear a whimper, you may choose to feed the Bite Wolf, but I would not feed them by hand. The sequence is designed to play just one time. Any additional attempts to press play will result only in sick beats. You are warned. The sickness of which I’m speaking is, of course, polio.

The fire celebration went off without a hitch last week and the Northwest location was destroyed. For a brief and magical moment, a small sun was created in the blaze, and if you looked just close enough, you could even see 8 planets and one significant dwarf planet orbiting the small sun. There were four terrestrial planets and four progressively colder gas giants. The third planet from the sun was blue and green and very lifelike. If you listened closely you could hear the faint sound of what I’m assuming was billions of tiny screams as the sun went red giant and devoured the remaining planets. The sight was truly beautiful. I am not sure that anything will ever be as beautiful again. I noticed a single tear coming from my left eye. I was able to catch it, and I have the small vial that contains it on my mantle, otherwise known as the “to be analyzed and/or scienced” file. Hundreds of you joined us for the celebration and absolved yourselves of all the guilt-bearing documents you had acquired over the last year. What a way to start fresh. In an unrelated event, the mysterious Koreatown location was also destroyed in a similar fashion. We do not have any details on this event other than that the sun was actually a binary system. I can only imagine.

Never to go long without a festival of some sort, I am proud to announce that next week we are having the Big Black Hole celebration. This is the time of year that we at Kakos Industries gather at our New York location to remember the accident that created the big black hole in the Earth where the New York location used to be. For those of you new to Kakos Industries, the big black hole is a hole in the state of New York approximately ¼ mile in diameter, and is completely unmeasurable in every other way. Our attempts at measuring the depth have been unsuccessful, but we have determined it to be at least 20,000 leagues below sea level. Seeing as how this would place the measurer, you know, the guy at the end of the rope, somewhere in outer space, and also seeing as how he was not burned up by the Earth’s core, we’re not exactly sure what he was 20,000 leagues deep inside of. The studies continue. The Big Black Hole has been an excellent place for depositing all kinds of tricky-to-dispose-of waste. We have not yet begun dumping the Clean Burning Uranium as it would make further study of the hole difficult, were we to ever find the bottom. If you’re in the New York area, you can stop by the festivities to join hands around the hole and watch as we drop a living aurochs into it. Our efforts to de-extinct the aurochs have resulted in the first healthy, living specimen. Our scientists are truly amazed, but they all agree that there’s just something not quite right about this aurochs. “Not this one” they say, so we’re going to throw it in the hole. You may be asking what Kakos Industries has to gain from reviving the aurochs. Truthfully, we wanted to revive the Tyrannosaurus, but, you know, baby steps.

I know that you’re curious, so I’m going to just tell you that our courtship of the Brotherhood of the Salmon Flagellations is going really well. We’re learning all about the sort of organizations that they control. We haven’t told them too much about our business, because we don’t want to sound like we’re bragging, and also we don’t want them to know that we plan to swallow them whole one day. As I understand it, they operate largely out of a chain of chicken restaurants. We asked them why not salmon restaurants, and they said it’s because their customers don’t deserve the sacred fish. But you know who they do share the sacred fish with? Us. It’s pretty exciting, I have to say. There’s a certain giddiness in the step of the Kakos Industry upper management right now. It’s not uncommon to see some of the executives skipping with joy, myself included. It just feels so good, you know? We are going to just devour their assets. We have already rounded up any of our shareholders or employees who might have ties to their organization and we have stationed them in Hell until we can arrange a trial, which, honestly, isn’t something we really do anymore. Icky, am I right?

The new division in charge of the Hell labor camp, The Division of Labor, has some news for us. Apparently, some of the workers were getting bored with the repetitive tasks and the monotony of doing the same thing every day. The DL has come up with a solution, though. The denizens of the deep will now be given a much needed break from their usual tasks in the form of additional tasks that their fallen comrades can no longer complete. That is, when they get laid off or laid to rest. While this might seem cutting edge, we’ve been doing basically the same thing to laborers throughout the above ground world.

Our resident Funk physician likes to remind us that bigger headaches call for bigger pills. There is good news. Our Department of Funk Pharmaceuticals has informed me that we have developed a bigger pill for the biggest of headaches. I am told that the process of actually swallowing a pill of this magnitude requires all of the muscles in the face, jaw, and neck to relax, relieving much of the headache, provided you survive long enough to complete the swallow. I am told that we are developing a similar pill for back pain, taken as a suppository.

A little while ago, I introduced a segment called Things We’re Taking Credit for Now. Astute listeners might guess that this is that segment. It is. So without further delay, the things we’re taking credit for this week are: handlebar mustaches, fortune cookies, and really liking a song, and then not really liking that song. Remember, we can’t actually confirm for certain that we had anything to do with these things, but we’re pretty sure we’re involved somehow. If you disagree with anything we’ve taken credit for, then just hold still. The Bite Wolves can smell your disapproval. I should mention that the trainers for the bite wolves all have handlebar mustaches, so they won’t attack anyone with one. If you have one, you get a free pass. This time.

I am proud to announce that Kakos Industries is beginning to animal test once again. I know that this might be disappointing for some as animal tasting is somewhat distasteful, but we have found that testing exclusively on humans is extraordinarily expensive. Not to mention, we’ve run out of places for the bodies. If you have any idea how large Kakos Industries is, and subsequently how much space we have for bodies, you understand the gravity of this statement. The Division of Green Energy is currently working on a method to turn the human remains into electricity for our buildings. Alternatively, we can feed the bodies to our GMO Human-Eating Plants, which is, at the very least, carbon neutral.

If you know one thing about Kakos Industries, you know that we love anarchy. There is money to be made in anarchy, there is evil to be made in anarchy. For this reason, we have decided to form a new political party, The Angry and We Mean It Party. Those of you who are fans of politics will be pleased to know that this new political party, The AWMIP, is estimated to be at least 30% more belligerent than any that has come before. To really capture the spirit of the American people, this new political party will be both upset about the level of taxes they are paying and also how little the government is taking care of their needs. This new political party will be completely disconnected from the reality they live in, and the several others that we keep tabs on. Politicians will be scrambling to determine how they can pander to this brand new political base, and members of all currently existing parties will see something in this new party they can hopefully attach themselves to. In the process, they will sacrifice anything that actually makes legislation work, and render the government inert. I can’t wait.

Kakos Industries is proud to announce the death of our greatest adversary, Alan Gund. Alan has been committing corporate espionage for years and just generally trying to foil our evil operations. We have tried splitting him in half with lasers, crushing him in giant clockwork gears, gassing rooms he might be in, and dropping him into liquid nitrogen. Every time we tried to defeat him, we were foiled. He would always somehow escape while our backs were turned and then reappear to cause more mayhem inside of Kakos. We like mayhem at Kakos Industries, but not this kind. You might be wondering how we managed to kill him this time. We stabbed him in the back with a big knife. It was really easy. If we had known that it would work, we would have done it years ago. His body will be arranged in some embarrassing position before it will be encased in bronze and placed in the basement ballroom.

I have news from the office romance that I have started. As you may remember, two of our most promising and sexually interesting young employees have begun a brand new romance under my clandestine guidance. It seems that Billy and Kara have met up for drinks. Just once, I am told, but it did happen. Friends of both Billy and Kara report that they are looking forward to doing it again some time. This is excellent news. I am positively excited to hear this. I know it might be a little bit early to think like this, but is it possible that they might get married? We haven’t had a marriage inside of Kakos in decades. Excuse me, a monogamous marriage. We have more triads than we know what to do with, and if I’m not mistaken, Karen Delgado in logistics has four husbands. Let it never be said that she is not an excellent time-manager. And let it also be known that Kakos Industries recognizes all forms of marriage when it comes to benefits. Anything we can do to cheapen traditional marriages. You know how the old model gets cheaper when the new one comes out? It’s kind of like that. Perhaps I should send Billy and Kara pamphlets about our marriage benefits. Yes, I think this is a good idea. Better yet, I think maybe I will have the Division of Pop develop some specifically targeted subliminal messages. Yes. This is a truly wonderful thing.

Marilyn Cooper has won this week’s Ruin a Life Contest. The life of her nemesis, Dani Doons, life will be ruined as a result. A spin of the Wheel of Misery has landed us on Indistinguishable Boring Dreams. For the rest of Dani’s life, she will have dreams during the night that closely mimic real life events. Dani will have the experience of brushing her teeth and dressing four times daily, which alone seems like punishment enough. In addition, she will wake up feeling like she has already done the boring tasks that make up her life, including her entire work day, but instead, she will have to do them all over again. Enjoy your newly doubled life Dani. Remember to drink lots of tap water. Best of luck. As for Marilyn Cooper, you may wake up without one of your ring fingers sometime soon. Or sometime later. It’ll go to a good use. Don’t worry.

And that concludes today’s broadcast. Along with your Synth-Aesthesia Synthesizer/Sequencer, you should have received a schematic and a screw driver. Follow these directions carefully. Remove the four screws on the back of the device at the center, top left, top right, and bottom right. Do not remove the screw on the bottom left or you will release the poison gas. Now carefully remove the back plate, but be careful not to pull too hard because you don’t want to sever the ribbon connecting the back plate to the main unit. This ribbon will trigger a grenade. Now set the back plate carefully out of your way. Unscrew the screw on the small black box next to the main circuit board. I know there are two, but it’s the obvious one. Inside the black box should be a little bottle of liquid. This is sugar water. Don’t drink it if you’re diabetic. Next, lift the tab on the yellow compartment, but be careful not to touch the sides of any other component. Some of them may trigger the grenade. I’m going to be honest. I don’t read Chinese, so that last instruction might be wrong. Inside of the yellow box should be a five dollar bill. Congratulations. A whole five dollars. That was worth risking your life for, right? Place the remaining components outside of your home and the Bite Wolves will take care of the rest. If you didn’t find a five dollar bill in your unit and you were also not killed by any of the traps, then it is best for you to go lay down someplace comfortable for a while.

Now for the numbers.

303
2600
808
60
909
1080
20
1/3

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. Special guest appearance in this episode by Sean Hennessy and Mike Hennessy. Check out KakosIndustries.com for more episodes. There are 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 exercising? It won’t change anything that’s wrong, but it might make you feel better.