in which you feel awfully heavy, you spend too much, preparations are made for ant-celebration and, for some reason, nesting, a war ends, hooded visitors appear where you want them least, and Jen O’Doom “wins” the Ruin-A-Life drawing. Do Evil Better.

Transcription:

Kakos Industries is ad free. To help keep it that way, please visit KakosIndustries.com/Patreon, that’s p-a-t-r-e-o-n, and consider a pledge of a dollar or more a month.

What you are about to hear may make you feel many times larger than you are.

Hello and welcome to the Kakos Industries corporate shareholders announcements. My name is Corin Deeth III and I am CEO here at Kakos Industries. Shareholders, if you were paying attention to the last set of announcements, and you weren’t like, totally wasted, then you may have heard that something terrible happened to Buffy Solomonari, Hailey’s little sister. Well, she was found to be totally safe, if a little pink and goopy. I don’t pretend to know what the Solomonaris are or why they have developed such a strange genetic adaptations, but it is true that they sometimes molt. I saw Buffy Solomonari later that evening, and while she’s normally a healthy and attractive young woman, what I saw was a hairless, sticky, pink silhouette of a woman that still somehow hit me with nothing but attitude. I’m told her skin will grow back, as will her hair and nails, but it may take some time. Apparently, Hailey had gone through a similar molt before we first met. Buffy’s molt came so late they were expecting it might never come. Anyway, I am still in trouble with her mother, Iele, but not as much trouble as I would have been if I had somehow killed Buffy. Iele has taken to adding spines to my chair in the boardroom, so I’ve taken to standing for all meetings. Some of those meetings can be up to eight hours as everyone shares their feelings on just how great Evil is. I mean, we work for an Evil company. We Do Evil Better. We help our clients to Do Evil Better. Everything is Evil here always. We don’t need to talk about how much we love it. It’s like they need to signal to the rest of the group that they also love Evil. Or perhaps that they love Evil more. I’ve ordered some pants that have a metal reinforcement inside that allows me to ever so subtly sit while standing and listening to them go on and on and on and on about how great Evil is and how they saw it first, and how they’ve always known Evil, in fact they were born into a long line of Evil, but really they still chose it for themselves, and that they might have left Evil for a time in college, but only so they could come back to it and appreciate it more. They’re raising their children Evil. They’re homeschooling them, in fact, so that they don’t get any of that terrible goodness from the public education system. They would so much prefer it if they taught the controversy between good and Evil, you know? Well, I don’t. I personally think they’re going way overboard. Evil is Evil. It needs no discussion. In fact, I feel as though bringing up how much you love Evil is a sign of disrespect. But, they are the executive board, after all. Certainly I sit at the helm, but so many of them have seniority over me and all of those years of favors, etc. etc., so I still have to be careful. And honestly, I don’t want to have to face any more of them in the Evildome than I already have. I once found a stray pinky finger in my hair after one of those bouts. Still not sure whose pinky that was. Or how it was severed.

Today’s broadcast is coming to you through drugs! Hooray, drugs! Drugs make you feel things, right? And they make you feel things that aren’t the things you were feeling, which is usually an improvement right? The things we were feeling are bullshit and we hate them. We would do almost anything not to feel those things we were feeling. And then there’s drugs! Yay drugs! Wherever it is that you are used to getting your announcements, you found a small purple pill in a foil and plastic wrapper, keeping it out of the elements. Some of you shareholders fearlessly took that pill as though nothing could go wrong from taking unidentified drugs. Others of you first used your fentanyl testing kits to make sure that you wouldn’t be needing any naloxone in a hurry. That was probably wise. Though you should know that Kakos Industries has developed some drugs that the mention of which may be enough to halt the breathing in some susceptible people, so you can’t always protect yourself from us. Others of you waited until you got a rock through your incoming projectiles window with a note attached to it that said “Take the fucking pill,” and then it was signed with just the initials KI. This was good enough for most of you, but some of you still persisted in not taking the drug until the second rock came through the window with one of your one time use passwords to know it was us. Now, I certainly hope you’ve found a comfortable place to sit. Once that drug kicks in, boy, girl, none of the above, all of the above, you are in for it. A sudden and intense lethargy. A hint of ache in every one of your muscles. A heaviness of your eyes. A heaviness of just about everything. You might feel a bit a frustration rising inside of you. You had more things to do today, but now Kakos Industries has subdued you almost entirely. You might be parked on the street in your car. Or on the subway. One way or another, you are quite sedated. And that’s just where we need you. We had to halt some of that extra brain function to make room for our messages. We had to make you able to receive them. Able to hear them. Able to turn encrypted light waves into the complex auditory hallucinatory experience you are now in the grips of. I can’t say much for the frequency response or audio quality as they are limited only by your mind and imagination. Perhaps you are capable of hearing well above and below the normal threshold. Perhaps a whisper in your mind seems unimaginably loud. Maybe. Though science suggests you can’t make any sound in your head louder or quieter. Not really. Which means you’re hearing me loud and clear. Excellent. At the end of this broadcast, you will not need to destroy your mind. Well, not any more than you already have, that is. Nor will you have to destroy your head. Nor will you have to destroy these molecules of the drug in your system. At the end of the broadcast, you should urinate almost all of the drug out of your system. Hopefully you will be able to get up and move around by that point. Otherwise, hey, it’ll be warm for a minute! Then the effects should linger for no more than eight hours, give or take four hours. And for those of you unused to psychonautical excursions, the white noise you see when looking at something very blue is normal. You just didn’t notice it before. The white noise you see while looking at something black, however, is something we’ve left you as a memento. If you’re not a Kakos Industries shareholder and you have taken this pill, then you should know we are very upset with you. That pill was for a shareholder, and you just took it yourself? What kind of monster are you? Also, you haven’t been worked up to this dosage, so things are about to get really scary. Hope you make it. I actually don’t. I hope you don’t.

We set up a space in Kakos Industries for the Society of Creative Anti-Celebration to take ups residence. They are pioneers, many of them working in the Division of Dionysia. They have been challenging and twisting holiday and celebratory tropes for a few weeks already. They are searching for new, perhaps more perfect ways of anti-celebration. It is not known yet whether their endeavors are teleonomic, or searching for an ideal way of anti-celebration, or whether their efforts are merely teleomatic, defying everything that is celebration by rules with no goal in mind. Some of their developments have been interesting. They’ve spent time just reading books. They spent some other time just fistfighting, but I’m not sure if that was research or just a way to settle a dispute they were having. I am excited to see what they develop. It seems like we might need more anti-celebration this year than ever before. Now, I’d like to take a moment and address the concerns that there is, here at Kakos Industries, a war on Anti-Celebration. I am told that in office cafes have served drinks in cups that to any reasonable person would seem festive at a bare minimum. This is a non-issue, shareholders. There is no war on Anti-Celebration. It is possible to keep Anti-Celebration in you heart without needing everyone on the planet to agree with you. Not to mention that the profits at each of those cafes have gone way up. That’s the Evil hand at work if ever I saw it. Which I can’t. No one can. It’s invisible. And also a metaphor.

Black Friday was a huge success again. We made a lot of money, and we made a lot of Evil. Every time we can convince someone that having something nice is worth sleeping in a parking lot for a week, we’ve done something really special. Televisions with even higher resolution? Vehicles that still sell for a profit, even if it’s a smaller one? Cleaning out your online wish lists of things you think you might have wanted ten months ago? Perfect.

As you might remember from last year, there is some flexibility in the festivals that we celebrate in the coming weeks. Once, it was the Festival of Cloud Watching. Last year, it was the Festival of Cold. This year the options were The Bestival, which is a festival that is also supposedly the best, The Chestival, which is not unlike The Festival of Titties that was an option last year, but more inclusive, and The Nestival, where we, you guessed it, build a big nest together. It was a close vote, shareholders, but it seems that you prefer comfort to things being the best or things relating to the chest, and now we have to spend some time building a nest in the basement ballroom. Somehow, I feel like this was something you shareholders have been willing with your minds for some time. Just wishing it into existence. Well, fine. Personally, I was holding out for the Questival, but it didn’t make it to the final vote. We will still be having the Guestival at a later date, allowing you for one day to bring your non Evil friends in for indoctrination. I mean, orientation.

Coming up, we have Yule. I fully expect there to be some Krampus-related shenanigans. I will still be dressed as a Krampus monster, but I’m working on a t-shirt that I can wear over the costume that says “I’m not a real krampus, please don’t try to fuck me.”

Shareholders, the fighting… if you can call it that, is increasing here at Kakos Industries. I know that I’ve ignored the Cult of Ohh Ahh for a little while, but it seems that the Ohh and Ahh factions are at war. Their method of fighting that war is apparently to fuck everywhere in the building while making angry and aggressive faces. I’ve even seen some of them shouting deeper and stranger kinks at one another, challenging them to oblige. And they do. It is truly a bizarre scene. It seems that the peace Bazzizzazizz-Ah has brought to them is no longer there.

(Helena enters)

Corin: Oh, Helena. I mean, Bazizka.

Helena: Hello, Corin.

Corin: I see you’ve disabled all of my security measures again. I was really hoping to keep the fighting out there from getting in here.

Helena: I will protect you, Corin. Even as the Prophetess of the Ohh Ahh, my first priority is to protect you.

Corin: So what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be fighting with your subjects.

Helena: My power supply is nearly exhausted, Corin. I did everything I could for my people.

Corin: You know, Helena, this is confusing the hell out of me. What exactly are these people doing?

Helena: They are having sex, Corin. If you’d like to try it someday, I’d be more than willing to help.

Corin: I know what sex is, Helena, and I know what they’re doing. Perhaps a better question is why?

Helena: To see whose faction should reign supreme. As you know, Corin, the Ohh faction designated me as the new prophetess because I am mostly machine, and I was the last entity to become enlightened by the prophet before he died. The Ahh faction thought an election would be best. They elected their prophetess Kimzzzzzzzzzz.

Corin: I heard that they had picked someone else, but I don’t think I know who this Kimzzzzzzzzzz is.

Helena: Of course you know her, Corin. She used to be Kimmie Quinn. You creeped on her and her girlfriend until Kiarawa broke them up.

Corin: Wait, Kimmie has a last name? Why did I never know that?

Helena: She has been a crowd favorite among those that chose voting.

Corin: So are these sides equal?

Helena: My side is smaller in terms of people, but we have all of the most powerful here at Kakos Industries. It has given us an edge.

Corin: And how will you decide who wins?

Helena: By how much pleasure each of our sides can bring about in the other.

Corin: How would you even go about measuring that?

Helena: Kakos Industries is constantly monitoring and scoring the pleasure that occurs inside its facilities.

Corin: Well, you’re not supposed to know that, and neither are the shareholders. FOrget you heard that, shareholders! There are no sex points. Sex is not about keeping score!

Helena: I have the score here.

Corin: It looks like your faction isn’t doing so well.

Helena: We are outnumbered, I am afraid. I have worn out all of my many attachments and I have nothing left to help with.

Corin: How much longer are you planning on competing in this way?

Helena: Not much longer. There. The competition has ended.

Corin: Then you’ve lost.

Helena: Yes.

Corin: Are you okay, Bazizka?

Helena: You can call me Helena again. And I’m fine. I am a cyborg. I am always fine.

(Helena walks away)

Corin: So Kimmie Quinn is now the leader of the Cult of Ohh Ahh. Well, we all wanted her to snap out of her depression, but this is certainly a surprise. I hope that the transfer of power is a simple one. As it is, we’re going to have to scrub literally everything. In fact, I might make them do it.

I understand that the gates of Hell has been receiving a number of hooded visitors requesting to speak with those in charge. So far, they have denied those requests, but they have begun designing a weapon that runs directly off of the misery engines. Maybe they’ll need it, maybe they won’t.

Jasmine Aashna from the Division of Erotic Experiences brought me an update on their project to somehow make people more sexual. The update was simply a piece of paper that says “We’re still working”. Then she added, “We’re getting really close.” But she said it in like a really sexual way. And also she was wearing what I can only describe as a porno french maid outfit. I would describe Jasmine’s usual attire as flattering, but comfortable. This was definitely not that. Then she clicked her way out of my office in what I’m estimating to be six inch heels. She’s a flats kind of person. I was honestly so taken aback that I didn’t really have a chance to ask any questions. She kind of curtsied at my door and then disappeared. Then the Tabithas came in to leer at me.

I understand that Helga is making dramatic improvements in therapy. She’s off the drugs, and she’s also lost all of her modeling contracts. The Universe somehow feels balanced again.

They say that Evil once shot a man in Reno just to harvest his organs for sale to organ collectors. This is Things We’re Taking Credit for Now. Today, we’re taking credit for that song you loved as a child but couldn’t possibly listen to now, the haircut you have today and will inevitably regret, and the passage of time that affects all of us, no matter how youthful we seem right now. If you don’t agree that we caused these things, then you should prepare to feel the passage of time a little faster than those around you.

Jen O’Doom has won today’s Ruin-A-Life Drawing. We checked: there’s a slim chance it’s a real last name. Jen’s win means someone else’s loss, namely her nemesis. Her nemesis goes by just the name Sid, and apparently rides a motorcycle. We spun the Wheel of Misery and it arrived at the space for Physical. From this day forward, Sid will be 220% more Physical. That’s a whole lot more physical to be. I can’t imagine the meetings or lunch dates that Sid will have. Just… too much contact, or maybe just too much movement. You know, too physical. Attempts to reduce the amount of physicalness will result in burning and antsy muscles until physicality can be resumed. For Evil measure, Jen O’Doom will be twenty percent less physical. This may take some adjusting. Congratulations on the win and best of luck.

This brings us to the end of this broadcast, shareholders. I bet you’re ready for this to be over. This feeling of lethargy. This feeling of numbness that somehow manages to hurt just a little bit. This maddening difficulty to function. Well, it should end soon enough, as I told you earlier. In the meantime, maybe you should learn to sit with those feelings of frustration. The numbers are next.

8

8

7

8

8

8

6

8

8

8

8

5

8

4

8

4

4

4

4

8

4

4

Kakos Industries is written and produced by Conrad Miszuk, who is also the voice of Corin Deeth. The music is also composed by Conrad Miszuk. The introduction is read by Kim Aiello, and the credits are read by Hanna Jones, who is just a handful of magic beans. Special guest appearances in this episode by Lindsey Forry. All other voices are Conrad Miszuk. Check out KakosIndustries.com for more episodes. There’s also transcriptions 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 check out store.KakosIndustries.com for merchandise and special offers and become a patron 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 Facebook (facebook.com/kakosindustries), Tumblr (kakosindustries.tumblr.com), and Twitter (@KakosIndustries).

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 got all of the apples out of the orange tree, and Valerie Koop who cleaned up that awful mess no one wanted to touch. 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, Morgan Wohlbrandt, director of the Division of Minimally Sentimental Greeting Cards, Lynne Herman, director of the Division of Increasingly Improbably Slash Fiction, 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 has knit a building cozy, which is intended to keep Kakos Industries from getting cold this winter. The building is currently covered in yarn as a consequence. The Division of Oceanic Micro-Cryptozoology claims to have discovered the Sasquater Strider, a large spider that also glides on the water. Most of us recognize this a a physical impossibility. The Division of Minimally Sentimental Greeting Cards has created a new holiday card line. The newest card has a pine tree on the outside, and on the inside it reads “Christmas, yeah.” The Division of Increasingly Improbable Slash Fiction has recently started shipping the Mars rovers. We have our doubts. The Division of Ever More Bizarre Injuries has developed the broken glute. It’s a broken ass, and we’re still not sure that part of the body can break. 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.

If you’re feeling down after this broadcast, have you considered committing more fully to spooning?