Featuring Kristen DiMercurio

in which we put a lot of keys in locks know-what-I’m-sayin’, The Shareholders’ Ball is recapped, preparations are made to hand out greeting cards, the Tabithas change their attitude, Hell discovers a new black hole, hush money is paid, we all try not to visualize “flesh ooze”, and Ruby Queen of the Wasteland “wins” the Ruin-A-Life Drawing. Do Evil Better.

Transcription:

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Intro: What you are about to hear is available from any coin machine.

Hello, and welcome to the Kakos Industries corporate shareholders announcements. At Kakos Industries we help our clients and everyone else to Do Evil Better. I am Corin Deeth III, CEO. As you know from last time, shareholders, the building here at Kakos Industries was set ablaze and burned for a really long time before the fire systems kicked in and ended the blaze. Most of the damage was superficial. All of our labs are doing just fine and getting back to work now. Some things are missing after the blaze, but we’re not really sure what those things were. We all have a sense of some sort of loss, or at least a sense that things are different, but no one can remember what or why. A lot of different spaces seem to have been cleared in the building. There was also a note on my desk when I got back into my office saying that, when the building burns as it did, I get to change things around. I don’t recognize the handwriting, and it did not specify what things I get to change. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll feel overwhelmed by the urge to change something in the coming weeks and months.

The benefit of having certain things from around the building disappear is that The Division of Figuring Out What All of These Keys Go To can now do their job once again, with all of these new doors and locks that have become exposed. Already, they found a door in the center of the building that somehow leads out of the building through a long and convoluted hallway. They also found that a pair of keys belonged to a dead employee. They found him in another locked room where he was evidently trapped after some sort of swingers’ event.

You are receiving this broadcast from an electric kettle.The sounds of the boiling water are, through amazing science from the Division of Aquatic Acoustics, picking up signals from the electricity in your home or wherever and turning them into audio. The sound can only be picked up by this particular kettle, which was manufactured by the Koala Kettling Company, and honestly, didn’t sell very well. If you happen to have bought this kettle at some point in the past, and you are now hearing these announcements without prior knowledge of what Kakos Industries is or does, then congratulations. You’ve been awarded a small number of shares. Welcome. If you’re wondering what Evil thing you did to deserve this, then you should know that this particularly cheap and crappy electric kettle was the most cruelly manufactured kettle of all time. Even if you did buy it with your own money, you will still have to destroy it at the end of the announcements. Honestly, it has been faulty the entire time you’ve owned it, and we don’t want any more fires. There’s also a bag of tea included with the ones we delivered that will “definitely not make you trip balls or see the spirits of dead relatives” according to the spec sheet here. Cool.

Remember when that guy asked us to make him look like that other guy that he had beheaded during the Festival of Genes? Well, little did we know, he was actually Guy de Gaulle, famous thief, and the guy he killed was actually the head, no pun intended, of a large banking firm. We are told that Guy, now looking like that guy, just pulled off the heist of the century with his new appearance. I can’t be mad. I’m just too impressed.

Earlier today I had another strange visit from Jasmine Aashna, but this time she was accompanied by Dr. Dunkelwissen. They were both dressed seductively, I guess. There was a lot of neon fishnet stuff. They each placed a note on my desk, then Dunk pressed play on an old cassette boombox and the two of them began dancing in what I assume they meant to be a seductive manner. While they were dancing, I opened the letters. Jasmine’s said that everything was going well with her research. Dr. Dunkelwissen’s said that he had  nothing to do with whatever Jasmine is researching. Then, Jasmine took a body shot off of Dr. Dunkelwissen, timed to the music. When the music ended, they both took a bow, and then they ran out of my office. What the fuck.

Shareholders, you really brought it to the shareholders’ ball this year. Not only did you bring it, but you also turned up. I appreciate that. You came dressed in your finest digital attire, some of you actually wearing only digital images projected on your naked bodies. Others went the black-clothes-with-neon-rings route, which was also a great look. We had black lights everywhere to really draw out the intensity of the neon colors. What we didn’t plan on was the number of love stains we would also expose. I know that you shareholders like to get weird at our events, but I didn’t realize just how much pregaming you did. When the time came, you all gorged on the glowing and unethically modified foods, leaving even more neon colors strewn about and on your clothing. Just how did we get the juices from these plants and animals so colorful? Well, that’s a secret for now. After the feast, we began the improv show. I really don’t think these actors were prepared for just how humorous we found everything they did to be. At one point, after delivering a joke that should not have worked, one of the actors began to have a crisis on stage. It was as if nothing they did mattered. We were equally entertained by all of their behavior. After discovering this, they started challenging us, breaking the fourth wall, screaming directly in our faces, and one actor even broke down crying. We could not have planned it better. After doing several heinous things on stage, we welcomed several of the actors as new shareholders while the rest were drugged and put into hibernation. We’re not really sure we can wake anyone up from hibernation yet, so… there’s that. We’ll do something with them. With our new shareholders finally dressed for the occasion from garments that had already been discarded by the rest of you, DJ Hypnosis Rex began the music. It was perfectly tuned with human brainwaves, and soon we were all losing time and our senses of self to trance-like music. The rhythms were primal. They brought us together and threw us apart and dropped us to the ground and made us scream at the top of our lungs. Sensing a peak in the level of party, the blood was released for the blood orgy. Pimento lion glowstick was perhaps not the best tasting flavor of blood we’ve ever had, but it was one of the most spectacular. It was a beautiful evening, and I cannot thank all of you enough for joining us. My heart is glowing, as are the harder to wash areas of my body.

Last year, we had a pie festival and it turned into a pathetic food fight. Really? How old are you, shareholders? We don’t even let you become full shareholders until you’re adults. Anyway, this year we replaced the Pie Festival with the Chili Cook Off. All told, there were some amazing Chilis. Some of you, however,  as always, insisted on pushing the boundaries for what could be considered a chili. No one ate those chilis, except for the most adventurous members of our group, and our resident food critic Michael Mitch Michaelson. He described the fermented ground beef as intriguing, the clumps of hair as exciting, and the plating of the raw boa as stupendous. I had some of the regular chili. It was tasty chili. You guys make tasty chili. Congrats.

I’ve just received word that we found another lock for one of the keys. It opened a door. Behind that door, is another door. We don’t have a key to that door. Or maybe we do. We’ll just have to look through the remaining 700 jars of miscellaneous keys.

You might remember that we had the Celebration of Affirmation last year, which was a new festival listed in Kakos Industries Rules and Regulations Volume 10.5. This year, we’ll be scaling back this celebration to just include an exchange of affirmative greeting cards at lunchtime. That feels more like us.

The Big Black Hole where our New York location once was has just been spewing dirt up and out of it for the last year, creating a mound. The dirt is purple and tastes lightly of concord grapes. We checked the night club in Costa Rica. It’s still there and it’s not filled with grape dirt, so it seems likely that the big black hole has moved its end point to a candy factory of some sort. We’ll figure it out. Or maybe we won’t. I can live with that.

The Tabithas look strangely relaxed recently. For having been on the verge of emotional breakdown for over a year, I find this suspicious. Did someone fuck them? Who fucked them?  Who made them cave? How handsome and beautiful do you have to be to convince them to cave on this mission they’ve taken on? I’m not jealous, I’m just… I don’t know. It had to be sex, right? What else could have relaxed them? They’ve also been kind of ignoring me. Is this some sort of silent treatment? Or reverse psychology? It’s not going to work. I’m too smart for that. I spoke to Bernice Largo, the woman on my support staff that hired them to try and loosen me up sexually, and she told me that she fired them months ago for failure to meet their goals. Now they work for two other divisions over the Internet, but they’ve kept their desks in the room just before my office for some unknown reason. I find this information confusing. They’ve been flirting with me consistently for the past couple of months, though they haven’t been paid for it. What is perhaps more alarming is that Bernice did hire several new people to take over where the Tabitha’s failed, but she refused to tell me who those people were. I’m afraid this development has had the opposite effect of loosening me up, Bernice.

The Division of Figuring Out What All of These Keys Go To just opened a lock box that’s been sitting in storage for years. It had a fresh tuna fish sandwich in it. They tell me that it isn’t spoiled and didn’t taste half bad. Could have used pepper.

Meredith Gorgoro created another small black hole out of her human misery engine. Apparently, this was the goal all along. Who knew she was a master of physical exercise and also a master of science in physics. She’s working on a way to keep the black hole stable. Something about Hawking radiation. And the hooded people keep coming back to the walls around Hell moaning about energy. They apparently want the energy of the black hole. They refuse to identify themselves to our guards down there, however. The best idea we have right now is that those strange descendants of the extremophile microbes down there have a hunger for raw energy, and these misery singularities are attracting them like moths to a warm flame. The settlers in the caverns don’t seem to be bothered by the monsters, though. They’ve grown too used to them now, and some of them have become quite good at surviving even in those frightening circumstances. Expeditions into the caves looking for the source of these hooded figures haven’t returned. And numbers in Hell are dwindling. We’ll have to come up with an excuse to send a lot more people down there. Let’s see… who’s wearing orange right now?

Speaking of wearing colors, Kimzzzzzzzzzz backed off on her decree forbidding yellow. It did require a sum of money that was one dollar less than having her killed, and being shrewd business people, we chose to pay instead. Who knows what lunatic they would replace her with anyway. There are too many of our valuable employees that are either members of this cult or just like all the sex they’re getting from being a part of it, so we can’t just throw them out and end this nonsense. We are awaiting her next inconvenient decree.

When I handed over the money to Kimzzzzzzzzzz, I asked her if she knew why I was excluded from the Simulgasm. She reached out a hand, messed up my hair, and just sort of said “chill”. Then she turned away from me to play skeeball. She’s got a skeeball thing in her office. As I left, her followers bowed to me as though I had received some sort of blessing.

The Division of Figuring Out What All of These Keys Go To just found another bathroom. They say that it is in good condition, and it is clean. It is an all gender bathroom, and there is at least one appliance no one knows how to use.

Shareholders, I have news from the Division of Sacks. They have so many sacks over there. This will be really exciting.

(fanfare)

Dorothea: Hahahaha! Corin!

Corin: Dorothea, King of Evilon.

Dorothea: Corin, you haven’t been answering my phone calls.

Corin: Moving to Evilon to be in a sexless, loveless marriage with someone who openly despises me doesn’t really sound like fun.

Dorothea: Oh, don’t say it like that, Corin! We just got broadband Internet! I’m modernizing the country. This is a matter of honor, Corin!

Leopold: Dorothea, what are you doing?

Corin: Wait, is that Leopold?

Dorothea: I don’t know what I’m looking at, Corin. It certainly sounds like my brother, but it looks like… flesh ooze. Can you imagine flesh ooze, Corin? I can send you an MMS. We have those now.

Corin: I’ll skip the visual.

Leopold: Look at my left eye, sister. You will know it’s me.

Dorothea: It is you!

Leopold: Now, what are you doing, sister? With MY KINGDOM.

Dorothea: You were dead!

Leopold: Dead? Don’t make me laugh. Just because my heart stopped for over a year and my body became some sort of flesh ooze as you put it does not mean that I died. It’s all the handsome inbreeding, sister. It’s what makes us so beautiful, yet so strange.

Dorothea: I would not qualify you as beautiful, brother.

Leopold: You were never one to appreciate masculine beauty.

Dorothea: You look like a human puddle, brother.

Leopold: Nonsense. Now, you’ve had your fun. Get the fuck out of my Kingdom.

Dorothea: I can return to the sea and the pirate’s life?

Leopold: yes, you can do whatever it is that you want. I will call upon you when I have need of your uterus. Be gone.

Dorothea: I am so pleased. Goodbye brother. And goodbye, Corin!

Leopold: Now, Corin, I will become a man again. And then I will have you.

Corin: Fuck.

Leopold. Goodbye.

I would linger on that awful news a little longer, but I’m told that The Division of Figuring Out What All of These Keys Go To just opened another door. Inside was a bunch of gold bricks, a stash of automatic weaponry, and crates of white and brown powders. There was also a really dry corpse in there. This stuff, whatever it is, must be old.

They say that Evil carries a trophy from its first Evil deed. No one knows what it is, but it’s kept in a small bag around its neck. This is Things We’re Taking Credit for Now. This week, we’re taking credit for tupperware, boxes, and the deep reservoirs of misery we keep inside of all of us. If you happen to disagree with the things we’re taking credit for today, then you may find yourself drowning in that reservoir. Or another one. We’ve got a couple around, and we can definitely put you in them.

Ruby Queen of the Wasteland, Duchess of Grimble Grumble, Count of Numeralia, and Lord of The Grand Drip has won this week’s Ruin-A-Life Drawing. We did a little bit of research and found that most of those titles are real, and somehow earned. I didn’t ask questions. As a result of Ruby’s win, Xander, Wizard of the Citadel Under the Hidden Rivers, Steward, Guardian, and World Breaker of Dead Carcosa will have his life ruined. We did some research again and it turns out only around half of those titles are real and actually earned. Do these two LARP together or something? Well anyway, we gave the Wheel of Misery a good spin and it landed on the space for Bankrupt. I had the team check to make sure that they spun the Wheel of Misery, not the wheel from THE WORST GAME SHOW, and they confirmed it was The Wheel of Misery, but that in small print above the word bankrupt it said “morally”. That’s better. As a result, Xander of many titles will be 30% more morally bankrupt than before. This will lead to the destruction of a lot of important things in Xander’s life. And for Evil measure, Ruby, Queen of the Wasteland, etc., will now be ten percent less morally bankrupt. Are we sure we didn’t get these switched around? Being less morally bankrupt doesn’t seem all that Evil to me. Well, I will, as always, trust the wisdom of The Wheel.

This brings us to the end of our broadcast shareholders. You will now have the option of destroying your kettle, or brewing some tea with it. If you drink the tea it came with, the kettle is guaranteed to be gone by the time you come back to Earth. The numbers are next.

11

21

31

41

51

69

71

81

91

1

4

The Division of Figuring Out What All of These Keys Go To just opened a door into the recording studio. Was that always there? I’ll be taking that key.

Kakos Industries is written and produced by Conrad Miszuk, who is also the voice of Corin Deeth, and the composer of the music. The introduction is read by Kim Aiello, and the credits are read by Kelsey Kemmer, the VHS check out attendant. Special guest appearance in this episode by Kristen DiMercurio. You can follow her on twitter @kdimerc thats k d i m e r c or check out her website kristendimercurio.com where you can also hear snippets of all of other the podcasts she has weaseled her way into. And Andrew Bueker. Please visit KakosIndustries.com for news, extras, and more episodes. There are also transcriptions on the website if you’d like to read along with the Kakos Industries announcements. That’s K-A-K-O-S-I-N-D-U-S-T-R-I-E-S dot com. Please visit store.KakosIndustries.com for merchandise and special offers and get wonderful benefits by becoming a subscription donor at kakosindustries.com/patreon. Questions, comments, or a strong desire to collaborate? Drop us a line at inquiries@kakosindustries.com. If you like Kakos Industries, be sure to rate and review us on your favorite podcasting service, and connect with us on YouTube (YouTube.com/KakosIndustries), Facebook (facebook.com/kakosindustries), Tumblr (kakosindustries.tumblr.com), and Twitter (@KakosIndustries). We encourage fan art and listener participation on all our social media platforms. We’ve recently expanded our social media team, so please visit the website to view their credits and current projects.

Special thanks to our esteemed shareholders Iain Croall, Renee Stein, Dan Shumway, Blaise Devletian, and Courtney Campbell. Also thanks to our honored employees Katiana Greer, who deleted all of those nudes we accidentally took the other night, and Valerie Koop who successfully talked a monstrous experiment out of a full-fledged rampage. And thanks to our Division heads Britney Garcia, head of The Division of Beanies, Booties, and Construction Projects That Are Probably Too Large for Yarn, Patrick Green, head of The Division of Oceanic Micro-Cryptozoology, Lynne Herman, director of the Division of Increasingly Improbable Slash Fiction, Atramento Perdita, head of The Division of Deep Meaning, and Euan Goodfield, director of The Division of Ever More Bizarre Injuries. The Division of Beanies, Booties, and Construction Projects That Are Probably Too Large for Yarn just finished their mock up for their planned floating fortress. We’re not sure yet, how it will float. The Division of Oceanic Micro-Cryptozoology has given up on the Loch Ness cryptoplankton in favor of the Sasquatch algae. It supposedly only grows in sasquatch droppings that somehow fall into the water. The Division of Increasingly Improbable Slash Fiction has recently started shipping helium and krypton. They’re just not going to bond. The Division of Deep Meaning has claimed a connection between wood grain, and, like, the spirit of the Universe. You just have to think about it, I guess.The Division of Ever More Bizarre Injuries has bruised a phantom limb. We’re told it really hurts. Our esteemed shareholders, honored employees, division heads, and other Patreon patrons are the best. If you want a thank you in the credits, your own division, or other great rewards that help to keep this show running, please head to Kakosindustries.com/patreon. That’s Patreon: p-a-t-r-e-o-n.

Kakos Industries can be heavy sometimes. Try making a lifelong bond with an animal to ease the pain.