In which an adorable animal is delivered, a letter from Corin Deeth I is read, the Adult Entertainment Branch is disbanded, a client has a great idea for a new cable news station, a board game that will ruin your friendships is developed, the shareholder express their concern about Denny, and “Florencia” wins the ruin-a-life drawing.

Transcript:

What you are about to hear may be the last thing you ever hear. Just think about that.

Greetings from Kakos Industries. I am Corin Deeth III, CEO of Kakos Industries, and I would like to welcome all of you warmly to the seventh set of announcements read by me. Well, seventh if you’re into that whole linearity thing. As a reminder, though I doubt any of you could forget, this broadcast is exclusively for Kakos Industries Shareholders. If you aren’t a Kakos Industries Shareholder at this moment in time (and let me stress that I do care about linearity when I say this), then you are not permitted to listen to any more. You are also not permitted to ever speak of what you have heard so far, and also of anything ever again. Kakos Industries has released a pathogen into the general population that prepares them for just such a silencing. Frequencies embedded in this broadcast will activate the pathogen, severing the ability to communicate forever. Shareholders have been inoculated against this pathogen, but I am not at liberty to discuss how. And if we have somehow missed inoculating you, then I wish to express our sincerest apologies and also a reminder to floss more often.

This broadcast is coming to you from a speaker on the collar of a small animal of some sort. The Kakos Industries Division of Subversive Cute has developed a new small animal. They have drawn from the DNA of numerous cute species, including cats, dogs, domesticated rodents, and stuffed toys. The animal sitting in front of you has been intelligently designed to be nearly ten times the average cuteness of any of the species from which it was composited, which is enough cuteness to bring any room full of people to its knees, hoping to get a chance to play with this adorable wittle fuzzle. Oooh, look at him chase the bug! The development process of this new cute animal has been brought to an end for the time being, as the level of cuteness we have attained is, frankly, more than we are capable of handling. Its ears are just the right amount of perky, but watch out! now they’re floppy. Its fur actually changes color based on its emotions. Depending on how you feed it, it can either be pocket sized, or large enough to fall asleep on. It does not produce any allergens of any kind, also. It imprints easily on humans, and will follow its owner around everywhere if permitted. Keeping this animal around may induce seemingly magical events to transpire, and owners may be treated to visions of wondrous adventures. The Division of Subversive Cute has been unable to complete any work at all since these creatures have been produced, and they are merely the first stage in what had originally been a seven stage project. If we had gone any further, it is possible that no human would ever complete any work again, and it is also possible that no human would bother reproducing, ending the species altogether. Kakos Industries may be able to continue spreading evil without humans, but we have to admit that it would be a lot less fun. You have received one of these animals because we needed to get rid of them, and it seemed like a way to kill two birds with one adorable, fluffy scruffle. We have avoided naming this animal, because doing so may have brought the entire organization down. You are welcome to name the creature that you have received, but there is no coming back from that. You are warned.

There is not much to say, unfortunately, about the water festival last week. Prosperiana, formerly Kakolantis, our underwater, radical self-determination colony, is doing pretty okay, it seems. We witnessed the birth of their youngest resident, who is a healthy baby girl. Fuck.

Next week is the nudity festival. It should be no surprise to anyone out there to hear that the proponents of goodness worldwide have claimed that nudity creates immorality. While this notion may have been challenged recently, sometimes it is difficult for us to stop doing things simply because they are no longer as evil as we once thought. Still, we are aware of certain individuals on this planet who continue to view nudity in this way, and it makes us happy to push them further into their shells. May they never come out, and may they never discover happiness. A live video feed of the event will be transmitted directly into the homes of these individuals, who will be far too afraid to attempt to record them in any way. They will be forced to witness the human liberty that they despise so much. They may even enjoy what they see, and they may feel guilty as a result. As we always say here at Kakos Industries, when you feel guilty, we win. Unlike the blood orgy, the nudity festival does not actually involve any form of physical contact at all, but I would be lying if I said that people didn’t end up fucking all over the place anyway. It’s definitely not in the description of the festival, but it happens every time. Every time. We’ve been holding this festival since 1908. If you inherited your stock in our company from your grandparents, you know what they were doing.

Speaking of grandparents, I was fortunate enough to receive a letter from my Grandfather today. And before you jump to conclusions, no we haven’t started reviving the dead again. We have DEFINITELY learned our lesson on that one. Well, mostly, at least. Anyway, this is a letter that he wrote to me before he passed. I would like to share it with all of you now, live during the broadcast. “Dear Corin, I hope that everything has gone evilly since you have taken over the business. I’m sure that Grace Rule will have brought you up to speed on all of your new responsibilities as CEO of Kakos Industries. In fact, I am sure she has because I am looking at you through our most advanced Future Predictovision unit. Don’t believe me? Well, let me prove it to you. I can see you reading a letter right now. It occurs to me that that part may be obvious, but I wrote it down in Kakos Industries Immutable Ink, so it will have to remain in the letter. Let me see… There is an assassin in the studio with you as we speak.” Shareholders, I’d like to interrupt my grandfather’s letter to tell you that I do actually get quite a few assassins with me in the studio. I’m still not convinced he can see me. No. Wait, there actually is one behind me. He has motioned to me that I should finish the broadcast, and then we will conduct our business when we are off the air. That is very professional of you sir. I appreciate that. Let me return to the letter. It seems that my grandfather has indicated here who wins the battle between me and my friend back here, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise. You’ll just have to tune in next time to see if I am still here. He continues, “I am so proud of you for taking on this responsibility, and I have the utmost faith in you. I have scheduled a number of letters like this one to be delivered to you. Never forget that you are a new evil for a new generation.” Awww, that’s really sweet of him. It seems that he did spoil the outcome of the fight, though. Actually, it seems that our friend has disappeared already anyway. Perhaps the nanobots have already taken him downstairs for deconstruction and rendering. Well, shareholders, I intend to read you more of these letters as they are delivered, the schedule of which I am incapable of knowing because the Future Predictovision units are either discontinued, or never actually existed.

News from the Adult Entertainment Branch. They have stopped researching sex toys that will ruin you. It would appear that it’s no fun studying these sex toys when they have been designed to malfunction, and deliver a heavy dose of electricity directly to your sensitive parts. Fertility may have been impacted by this event, but it’s alright. Kakos Industries makes sure to take a sample of both egg cells and semen from those of our employees who produce them on their first day as an employee. We are well aware of the kind of things we do here and this is an important precaution. If any of our research divisions asked for a sample from employee 223-4-9, occasionally known as Barbara Wiley, they wouldn’t be able to have it unless we had taken it from her on day 1. And they also wouldn’t be able to do their work if we gave any of those cells back to the employees, so stop asking, 223-4-9! Everyone knows that it’s a bad idea to try to use pregnancy to keep your boyfriend anyway. At any rate, the AEB has closed down. Recognizing the importance of that type of work, Kakos Industries is proud to announce the DAD, or the Division of Adult Diversion. Their job description is identical to that of the AEB, but they have an entirely new staff. Good news. The DAD, eager to prove themselves, have developed a new penis enlargement cream. I am told that this new penis enlargement cream actually works when applied directly to the penis, unlike all of the others on the market. I am told that there is a snag, though. No matter what dosage of the cream is used, the resulting change in size is so substantial that the subject’s penis becomes too large to fully stiffen, and too large for any human woman to handle. Still, the line for research subjects wraps all the way around the DAD headquarters. Things have worked out better than expected.

A client of Kakos Industries came to us with an idea. They said they wanted to make a Cable News channel. We politely replied that such a thing already exists. “But wait,” they said. “ We want to make a cable news channel that is truly evil.” Our interest was piqued. They said “We want to make a news network that intentionally misleads its viewers.” We told them that such a thing already exists. They said, “no, no, not like that. We want a network that claims to be impartial, but instead hides its agendas inside of its headlines.” We told them that this already exists. They said, “no you’re really not getting it. We want to make something so evil that it spends all of its time digging into celebrity news and fake outrage, with pundits who aren’t remotely qualified, while ignoring important world events. It will keep the people completely uninformed.” We told them that such a thing exists already. “No!” they said, turning blue in the face, “we want to make something so evil that it will actively make its viewers angry to feed into their addiction to emotional stimulus. It will actually teach them that anger is the correct response!” We sighed heavily and informed them that such a thing does already exist. They began to sweat profusely. “You still don’t get it. It will masquerade as a source of information, but it will only provide people with a range of various emotions that will keep them hooked enough to sit through all of the commercials. And it will have commercials, showing for certain that there are places they won’t go because their paychecks depend on them not doing so!” We began to feel sorry for this client of ours, and we said, “okay, we’ll look into it.”

Kakos Industries, more specifically the Division of Tabletop Diversion, has developed a new board game that is guaranteed to make you fight with your friends, and potentially never speak to them again. The game features extraordinarily convoluted game mechanics, requiring players to decipher every single instruction and come to some sort of consensus together about what it might mean, but then in the heat of the game itself, the consensus may be broken as new situations come to light. In addition, the game features the same psychopathic brand of anti-social capitalism that players have come to expect from other confirmed relationship killers like Monopoly. When speaking to some of the play testers, play tester 103-7, otherwise known as “Chad”, indicated that he definitely would never be speaking to player 103-9 “Jimmy” ever again, even though they had been friends since elementary school. He indicated also that the mechanics of the game itself seem to bring out the worst in human nature, where without some sort of objective reasoning to base further opinions on, the self-serving survival instinct takes over and runs rampant. 103-7 explained to us that he had no intention of taking the game so seriously, or making so many decisions to fracture what was a reasonably strong relationship earlier, but the openness of the game just made it so hard to be a decent human being. 103-7 was not alone in these observations, either. Players from throughout the entire play test admitted that they learned terrible things about themselves, and most found it a relief to think that they could go back to the relative stability of the real world after playing it. The game is titled “Let’s Have Fun!” and it will be on shelves as soon as the two creators can work out their differences.

We have news from Denny, or rather we have news from our shareholders about Denny. If you have forgotten and/or it has been manually deleted from your digital memory banks, Denny is a human brain that we here at Kakos Industries in the Division of Philosophical Sabotage have immersed completely into a fake digital reality. Denny’s experience is as lifelike as any of the rest of ours. We are intentionally vague about the details of Denny, particularly as to whether he or she is male or female, or anything in between or outside of that dynamic, because Denny is one of our shareholders listening to this broadcast. It might color the results if Denny happens to realize that he or she is a brain in a computer. One might call it hubris for us to tell the brain in the computer that there is a brain in a computer, while hoping that the brain in the computer doesn’t realize it’s a brain in a computer, but at Kakos Industries, hubris is kind of our thing. We have been receiving a number of letters from our concerned shareholders about the prospect of them being Denny. Apparently a number of our shareholders have been having dreams that they are being reprogrammed, or rebooted, or simply that the reality around them is dissolving into a stream of green 1s and 0s. We would like to take this time to calm your nerves. We have received far too many letters from shareholders for all of you to be Denny. There is only one Denny. Just one. So, many of you, if not all of you, are worrying needlessly. Many of you have requested confirmation that you are not Denny, which we are more than happy to provide. I will say that, if we have received a similar note from Denny him- or herself, then we will have also assured him or her that he or she is also not the brain in the computer. Kakos Industries has no problem with telling the truth, but when we do, you won’t believe it.

I have an important announcement from the Division of Goats. They would like me to remind all of you that we all bleat the same. I thought they had more for me to read, but it looks like that is all that was on the page. Still, for talking goats, it’s pretty good.

It has been said many times before that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I am proud to tell you that this is now literally true. Recently, one of the charities that Kakos Industries operates listed that it needed skilled laborers to pave the way to a remote orphanage as the children there have to walk miles to get to town and none of them have any shoes. Needless to say, we received a number of enthusiastic volunteers, and the project was just completed. The laborers were then taken to the labor camp below, where they will begin manufacturing Spanish tile. Do not be afraid for these people, because there is good company in Hell. This is also literally true because we held a Good Conversationalist Convention down there, and no one has been allowed to leave since. I think that this road will suffice for now, but I look forward to a day when we can finally put in the highway we’ve always wanted.

We have news from the Division of Secret Societies. It seems that our courtship of the Brotherhood of the Salmon Flagellations has come to a rather abrupt conclusion. We thought that everything was going so well, too. Just a week ago, they were showing us around some of their locations, and telling us about all of the diabolical things we could do together. We had plans, you know. There were things we were going to do together. And all of that is now gone. We haven’t heard from them in a while, and we also haven’t been able to get in touch with them at all, but it’s at least likely that they may have heard about us courting another organization. I have to admit that this is true. The Division of Secret Societies did begin working on another organization, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Sports Bra. Perhaps we jumped the gun on that one. We’ve decided that if we can’t have the Brotherhood of the Salmon Flagellations, then no one can, and, as I speak, a number of our associates are burning their restaurants to the ground. Look what you made us do, Brotherhood. We didn’t want to do it. You should have just given us a chance to explain. That other organization isn’t anything to us. It was just a little flirting. Though I admit we now have to pursue the Sisterhood of the Travelling Sports Bra just to satisfy our bloodlust. If you’re curious, it’s a 36 B.

Our office romance seems to be going pretty well. Kara and Billy have started to have nice normal dates and nice normal sex, at least for now. I am told that they have spent hours together just cuddling and watching political dramas. I am also told that they may have come up with some cute nicknames for one another. One of our monitors thinks he heard Billy call Kara his Poodlekins. We are waiting to hear if Kara responds with an equally cute name for Billy. It’s just so adorable. I don’t even know what to do with myself sometimes. I just get caught up in how cute they are. You know, it might be way too early to tell, but with the amount of time they spend together just cuddling, I wonder if they might some day consent to being the same person. This would be incredibly valuable to our research here at Kakos Industries. We have combined human beings before, but it has ended in failure. We’re thinking that the people involved might need to like each other for it to work. There is a special kind of joy, however, in watching two lifelong enemies forcibly separate themselves.

Evil can be like a dirty joke. Somebody somewhere is responsible for its creation, construction, and spread, but knowing who and where and why is usually difficult. Seeing as how Kakos Industries is one of the largest organizations responsible for developing and improving evil, it’s a pretty good chance that we have something to do with all of the evil that touches your daily life. Here’s the list of evil worldwide that we are taking credit for this week: Using “literally” figuratively, those foreigners that don’t speak English, and having to sneeze, and then not being able to sneeze. If you happen to disagree with anything we’ve taken credit for this week, then think about how the cute little animal in front of you feels about that. That animal loves you, but it loves Kakos Industries more. Don’t break its heart, you terrible, terrible person.

The winner of this week’s Ruin a Life Drawing is the artist only known as Florencia. If you haven’t heard of Florencia before now, that’s okay. No one has. We honestly didn’t even know she was a shareholder. As a result of her name being drawn, the life of her nemesis will be ruined. Florencia has selected The Artist Rarely Referred to as Dantesco. This was a tough one for the Wheel of Misery to decide folks. It actually spun around for nearly three days before arriving at its decision. It seems that Dantesco is such a complicated character, full of contradictions and irony, that the wheel could find no simple solution. The decision at which it arrived appears to be a brand new space that had not been there prior. Our scientists have measured the wheel, and it is the same size, and each spot on the wheel is also the same size, and all of the old spaces are still there, but there is now one more. Dantesco, you should be proud to know that the wheel of misery took extra special care to ruin your life, not only inventing a new miserable condition, but also warping the space around it to make it possible. The space that it landed on is Better at Art. Surely being better at art is a good thing, but in the case of Dantesco, being better at art will only make it clear how horrible all of the other art The Artist Rarely Referred to as Dantesco has created is. And further, Dantesco’s entire career has been based off of being able to justify the terrible pieces of art through loud personality and appeals to postmodernism. With the better taste and better skill that Dantesco will now have, even Dantesco will no longer be able to stand the character and body of work that is Dantesco. Best of luck. As for Florencia, we’ve decided to leave her just how she is. Yup. It’s enough.

And this brings us to the end of the broadcast. At this time, you must remove the collar off of the outrageously adorable animal in front of you and destroy it. Smash all of the pieces and then throw them out. As for the animal, you have to shun it. That’s right. The most precious and wuvable wittle critter you’ve ever seen must be told to leave and never come back. If you’re worried that you’ll never get over the heartbreak, think of this experience as something that will inform all of your future roles in that acting class you’re taking. The numbers list is just ahead. This set only ranks at 2 Camus of meaninglessness, which the Germans refer to as Eine Kleine Nietzsches Maßeinheit. Still pretty dangerous. You don’t want to think yourself into an unresponsive puddle of philosopher.

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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, consider taking a walk in nature to really enjoy the beauty of the present moment, and to think about how lucky we are to be alive right now, and how all of this will be gone some day.