The Campbell Brothers Winery and images to 2006.

I still find it a bit odd putting together the history of the Campbell Brother labels and having to do so in reverse order, earliest to latest, but in a way it's an appropriate way to visit that particular past.

There are, as it turns out, a number of major themes that run throught the stories. Some of them are:

Animals. For some reason our furry friends feature highly in our stories. There were often squirrels (sorry about the fishing joke) as in Upschitz and Gone With The Wind, mice as in Assimilation Wine, the rats of Atlantis, the sheep for the Rubber Boot album (and the reference in the Bottles story about Colin living with one), and, oh yes, an Orangutan for colour (Atlantis again) who was borrowed from the net.

Since Ralph and I have both become drivers for Greyhound Canada references to it appear in stories like the Bottles and Atlantis (including the bus we use as a boat).

For some reason women's apparel has become a theme, as in Pollice Verso and the Gypsy Curse.

Chili has appeared in a number of stories as well including the Bottles, Gone With The Wind, Dry Heaves, and Atlantis. It often had unpleasant characteristics.

And of course wine, often of a violent nature.

Images have indeed been 'borrowed' from a number of sources, often from the net. The thing to remember here is that these labels and stories were intended only to accompany the Christmas wine that Ralph and I make in order to give away to family, friends, and co-workers during this holiday season. It has never been meant for extensive circulation and has certainly never been done for profit (you wouldn't believe what we spend on this stuff now every year).

So why is it here on the net? As I believe I said earlier in the comments about this blog, I did it for my brother Ralph who I thought would really enjoy it.

Again, I hope you do too.

The Bottles

O.K., this is it. The final label entrail, I mean entry for this year and the completion of the saga of the Campbell Brothers to date.

Now this really took some time to prep and organize. The bottle label we produced this year was deliberately kept simple (as was the next) because everything else associated with the project was so complicated. For the Bottles story we actually produced a CD insert, to size and professionally printed (courtesy of Dingo, I mean my friend Sid).

I had been working on this off and on for probably six months. Nobody I've talked to yet has gotten all the references and jokes that are built into the story. In order to create the history of the band I've had to 'borrow' images from numerous sources, usually available over the net.

For the Major Catastrophe label I started with something I was familiar with, an album called Lumpy Gravy by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. From there I added a number of bits and pieces, a number of characters from privious years wine labels and also shots of myself and Ralph and Sid.

In Flabby Road my son Elliot is in both shots, once on the sidewalk, once on the car. The beer cases in the road came from a picture on the net about a transport truck spilling its cargo. The actual shoot we did for our images was fun because we carted down all the saws and snowshoes and everything to what we felt was a fairly remote arean in Toronto, and yet we still seemed to attract an audience as we shot the pictures.

There are also pictures and references to many other things, like Greyhound and one of its driving instructors Mike Sullivan.

I have always been a big fan of the Beatles and so it was fun to create the dark image of the band featuring us. I hope you enjoy it too.

Anyway, here's the wine label.



And here's the story:



The Bottles were a Scottish rock group from Cesspool in Peat, Scotland, near Argyle. They are almost universally regarded as the worst band of all time and a runner up for the distinction of being the most grating noise in the universe. The group shattered many eardrums and achieved international criticism for their nerve to call what they did ‘playing music’. They were, and in spite of themselves, a very influential band. Their music made many musicians want to play… other types of music, any other type.

Dubbed ‘The Flab Two-Four’, the Bottles were comprised of two brothers, Colin Campbell and Ralph Campbell, and their mad drimmer Dingo. The two brothers were the principal songwriters and fecal disturbers of the group.

History:

Ralph Campbell formed a ‘Stumble’ group, the Henchmen, in 1957. On July 6th of that year, he met his brother Colin for the first time and asked him for money. Colin refused and joined the band instead. Their first regular gigs were at the nearby Campbell castle, in a club called ‘the Dungeon’. The castle was in excellent shape until the Campbells started playing there. They made the place the ruin it is today.


Castle Campbell

The Henchmen went through a progression of name changes to avoid their creditors: Dong Long and the Stubby Bottles, the Stubby Bottles, and eventually, tired of trying to remember how to spell ‘stubby’, they settled for just ‘The Bottles’. The band went through a couple of drummers in this time as well until Dingo (named as such because he used to growl and bark at audiences, sniff crotches and hump peoples legs) was found asleep at the drum kit and refused to leave. He was also asked for money, this time by both Campbells. He loaned them his credit card. The lineup was now set.


Dingo


In the early years the Bottles used to drink on stage and throw bottles at those people in the audience who clapped when they finished a song. They found out later that clapping was supposed to be a good thing but decided to still throw bottles because it was now part of their image and they were getting rather good at picking off targets, particularly in the balconies.

It wasn’t long into their career when they were asked to play in Germany for a while in order to give Scotland a break. They appeared at the infamous ‘Rat Cellar’ where they perfected their lack of talent and were discovered to be an effective form of pest control. Upon returning to the British Isles they released their first single “Love My Do Do”, which for some bizarre reason made the British charts, likely because it was mistakenly purchased by many Londoners as a record on how to house train a dog. They quickly released an album, ‘Please Police Me’, in order to see if they could make a quick buck before anyone realized they had no talent at all.

The music they played at this stage was often referred to as The Mercy Beat or The Bloody Beat, as in ‘ It’d be a bloody mercy killing if we just beat the expletive deleted out of them and left them for dead’.

The Bottles created a sensation in Scotland in the early nineteen-sixties (dubbed Bottlephobia by the press) notable for the screaming and swooning young women who saw the band, usually followed by vomiting. Eventually they were forced to leave the British Isles and go to North America as one of the several ‘thug’ British bands who were forced to do the same in what has been termed the ‘British Home Invasion’.

The Bottles had a friendly rivalry with another band... The Runny Stools, fronted by Dick Dagger. Well, not really friendly, but they seldom engaged in open warfare. Usually it was just an exchange of insults, and whatever objects came easily to hand. Mainly the members of both bands tolerated one another because they both were just too comatose to bother.

In the 60’s, when the Bottles was forced to leave the country again, this time on parole, they embarked on a world tour, not that they wouldn’t have liked to stay in any one spot for a while but once the host country discovered who these imbeciles were it wasn’t very long before they were forced to move on.

Bottlemania literally exploded in the United States when a wine barrel, part of Colin’s ‘personal’ luggage, blew up at Customs and Immigration because somebody shook it. They performed three national television appearances on the Mike Sullivan Show, rescheduled each time because the cameras kept breaking down for some unknown reason. They stopped touring in 1966. They ran out of gas, literally. The credit card they were using, belonging to Dingo (in the name of Stark Raving Richard), was maxed out and had to be put down.


The Mike Sullivan Show

Their last live gig was at the Hollywood Bowl-A-Rama, an all night bowling alley and chili stand, billed as ‘No Deposit, No Return’. It was closed by the Health Department because of the unsanitary condition of the band. They weren’t allowed to play until they changed their underwear. What the authorities didn’t know is that they changed with one another.

Around this time Ralph made a comment that the Bottles were more popular than a book he had once seen on how to pick bug crap out of ground black pepper… which caused an immense and angry reaction from entomologists worldwide. They flew into a rage and decided to boycott the band which they already weren’t buying music from anyway. Ralph also had to apologize to his sixth grade science teacher.

The Bottles retired to the studio (actually an abandoned petrochemical storage tank) and started producing albums at an alarming rate. Among their releases were such classics as Yelp!, A Day’s Night’s Hard, Revolt’er, Rubber Boot, The Mostly Brown Album, and the important Major Catastrophe’s Stretch Fabric and the Elastic Waist Band..

The Bottles also embarked on some very eclectic projects, one of which was the Maniacal Misery Tour in which they made concoctions of chili and wine which they served from a beat up old Greyhound bus touring the countryside, and then drove away before the cramps and barfing set in. They were also featured in two movies: ‘Yelp!’ and ‘A Day’s Night’s Hard’ but nobody cared and certainly didn’t go to see them.


The End: Broken Bottles

The band stayed together for an astonishing number of years until one day, because they’d run out of drink the night before, everyone woke up sober and quit the band on the spot.

After The Bottles broke up Ralph and his ‘significantly other’ Yoyo Yoko (an eccentric organic gardener from Sussex in Ashes, England) and guitarist Cleric Apton (formerly of the band ‘Crud’) went on to form ‘The Plastic No No Band’ (named after a dildo owned and operated by Yoyo Yoko) also to no critical success.

Ralph and Yoyo also staged a ‘run in’ at a major hotel in Toronto, Canada because they had to keep running into the bathroom and throwing up. There they recorded ‘Give Peas a Chance’.

Colin went on to form ‘T’ings’ and released a number of awful albums like: ‘Wieners and Beans”, “T’ings over America” and “Band on the Rum.” He moved back to Scotland where he is currently living in squalor with a sheep named Stella.

The Music:

Many of the songs written by the Bottles were about their personal experiences – like drinking too much and falling down. A good example of this was the song ‘Trickle to Rot’ which was about drinking the fermented runoff from a cattle feeding corn crib and getting drunk. The lyrics went:

“I think I’m gonna’ be sick, I think it’s today, yeuggh.
The cow that just drank this stuff’s melting away, ugh.
…He drank a trickle of rot, now he don’t care.”

A whole album was devoted to the theme of running away from angry mobs in ‘Beat The Bottles’.


Rubber Boot

The albums ‘Rubber Boot’ and ‘Revolt’er’ hearalded in a new era of experimentation for the Bottles – this time with real musical instruments, although the songs were still pure shit drivel. Most of the songs were, of course, about drinking, with wine as the beverage of choice, although other songs were a significant departure to this motif and concentrated on bodily functions like ‘Paperback Wiper’.

Other songs of that era focused on their familiar surroundings, like the dumpster and the alleyway they used to live in, featured in the songs ‘Pissy Lane’ or ‘Raw Septic Fields Forever’, and on the albums ‘Yellow Dump Truck’, and what has been called ‘The Mostly Brown Album’.


The Mostly Brown Album

After spending months in the studio, mainly because they couldn’t find the exit door, they released ‘Major Catastrophe’s Stretch Fabric and the Elastic Waist Band’– a concept album which set new heights for the band – they actually sold some.


Major Catastrophe's Stretch Fabric and the Elastic Waist Band

‘Major Catastrophe’ was a chance for the bottles to let their hair down, which promptly fell out. The songs for the album were composed at the time that they were studying Eastern Standard Mysticism under their teacher and guru Mahahaha Ronnie. It was he who guided them in the discipline of TransientMental Indentation – which involved hitting one another over the head with small ballpean hammers. Mahahaha Ronnie was also a practicioner of Yogic Flying, in which he got his pupils to buy him first class plane tickets so he could fly to other countries and annoy people with his meaningless prattle.

The Bottles were also, it must be admitted, experimenting with drugs at this time, usually those which could be dissolved in wine – like Draino and Septibac (although certain mountain grown fungus also became popular for their mind altering effects which weren’t really needed). Their music reflected this.

‘Loopy in the Sty with Doorknob’, one of the songs from the Catastrophe album, was puzzled over because of its unfathomable lyrics like:

“Picture yourself in a hat made of paper,
With cellophane jock strap and polka dot tie.
Somebody snickered, you answered quite groggy,
My woman’s inflatable, guy”.

It was eventually realized that it was not really a song about a bad drug trip, just a bad song.

The album ‘Flabby Road’ played up the theme that Colin was really a male impersonator. On the cover he’s shown walking across the road in a bathrobe and about to step in a turd



(Possibly a mirror of the problems being encountered with their production company Crapple Corp which had been formed after the voluntary death of their manager Brian Von Frankensteen.)



The ‘Letter B’ album (also called the bum or bathroom album) was the final album put out by the Bottles, and thank goodness. The title song by the same name really said it all:

“When I find myself in times of trouble,
Constipation comes to me,
There must be a movement,
Letter B.”


Letter B

The Bottles have firmly stolen their place in music history and then run for the bathroom in order to puke.They will be sorely remembered by many, particularly those who’ve witnessed their shows from balcony seats.

Again, there will never be a band quite like them, and according to popular sentiment that is a bloody good thing too.

The rear of the CD booklet had this:

Barf & Puke

This label is actually a photo I had taken of a bar sign in Stratford, Ontario (with modifications of course) which again features a boar's head, part of the Campbell family's coat-of-arms. Because everything else is getting too complicated, the story, the images used, we wanted the label itself to be elegant. O.K. mayby not elegant, maybe just simple.

For the story of this label we ended up going with a tabloid format printed on 11X17 paper so that it could be folded and opened like a newspaper, using lurid headlines to break up the written sections.

My son Elliot wanted to be included in this production (as in The Bottles) so he is.

The main picture for the tabloid features an old house in the French Quarter of New Orleans that my friend Sid had taken when we were there on vacation last year (complete with bathtubs). I don't really want to describe the process I went through with the picture minutely, just say that everything has been played with: tubs moved, flames added, walls built, bricks moved, Campbells positioned, plaid touched in, etc.

And here's the story of the Campbell Convent Catastrophe as it appeared in our Chicago Inquired, volume one:

A title reads: Roaring 20’s Fiery Furnace Fiasco

It was at a time when one would think that the Campbell brothers would finally make it big with an illegal booze operation, but again the brothers managed to clutch defeat out of the hands of victory.

Running a speakeasy was nothing new to the two brothers, they spent most of their time running anyway; from explosions, cops, other bootleggers, and often dissatisfied customers. But it must be said that they always had plans, usually big plans, sometimes too big.

So, not satisfied with the possibility of just screwing up their own operation the brothers decided to form an association of illegal nightclubs. They even had a name for their proposed company: ‘The Brotherhood of Artificial Refiners, Fermentators, Preservers, Undertakers, Khemists (the brothers couldn’t spell very well either) and Embalmers’. That’s right, the BARF & PUKE association. Their first (and as it turned out, only) club, the supposed flagship of the operation, was also called by this name.

This is really the story of how that association never happened.



It seemed an ideal place for the Campbells to operate, an old condemned convent. Even the nuns, with all their prayer power, had felt unsafe to live there and moved out a number of years previously. The least of the problems was that it had no electricity; the place was lit with candles and oil lamps. But what it lacked in power it sure made up in bathtubs. On the second floor, a long hallwaystretched down the length of the building with cubicles off to either side, each containing an old claw tub, 24 of them to be exact. The walls of the hall were a dark red oak. The wood was quite dry and cracked, caused by the passage of time and neglect. It was carved with figures of saints and that typical sort of religious imagery that either showed these people in ecstatic trance or this certain other person undergoing something that the Roman’s had become particularly good at, torture and execution. To the Campbells it seemed like heaven, a perfect place to set up their operation and to make bathtub gin.

Title: Convent source of illegal bathtub gin.

Now, just in case you don’t know, bathtub gin is made by placing a large quantity of low quality spirits in a bathtub and then adding juniper oil and other flavorings to it. Then you let the whole thing soak for a few days, and voila, gin. Some contend that many outlandish cocktails of the Jazz Era owed their inspiration to people trying to disguise the disgusting taste of the gin, and it should be said that what the Campbell’s made in those tubs upstairs sure was disgusting.

Prohibition was the law of the land and liquor was illegal to make or to sell. The Campbells had, of course, found their own little corner of the market, a dry corner, and had just set up and opened the Barf & Puke. Now everybody from miles around had made their way to the new club in order to put in a good solid night of drunken debauchery.

Title: Club named Barf & Puke, Den of Iniquity.

The outside of the ‘B&P’ was dimly lit from light trying to flee from any crack or crevice in the structure and make a run for it. Music seemed to cause the building to vibrate right down to the foundations. Inside, the smoke filled crowded and noisy main hall was shimmering and simmering to the beat of the five-piece band, the people were Shimmying and Charlestoning, and drinking gin.

The only thing that was holding up the roof nowadays seemed to be the bats who colonized the rafters, but these kept falling into the tubs. Eventually Ralph, tired of fishing out drunken bats from the vats, put a small ladder in each tub so the bats could climb out themselves.

Both brothers had excellent ears for music, it’s true. It’s just that the rest of their bodies weren’t very musical at all, honest.

Colin always wanted to play the saxophone but all he could do was play the bongo, and not very well. Here, at the B&P, he insisted on wearing a shiny sequined flapper dress, and when he wasn’t flogging drinks he was out dancing in front of the band (and making eyes at the bass player). Nobody seemed to notice or to care, except for one very nervous bassist.


Colin 'Legs' Campbell

The only thing Ralph could do was make gross noises using various body parts. He could even fart out the beginning of Beethoven’s 5th (but the odor would clear the room). He was delegated to stay behind the bar and keep everybody well lubricated, which suited Ralph just fine. He was allowed to tap his foot to the music.


Ralph 'The Nose' Campbell

Title: Plaid Gin sparks inquiry

The brothers were believers. They believed in quick profits and eliminating the middle man. They’d have eliminated each other years ago if they could. They were also cheap. Since they wouldn’t afford bottles for their gin they ran hoses from the tubs upstairs directly to the bar. To tell one batch of gin from another they added different colouring agent to the tubs, red, blue, green, purple, yellow and so on. Ralph’s favourite was plaid. They asked Colin how they managed to get that colour. He only chuckled and shook his head.

The place was rocking, the money was pouring in, the drinks were passed out, drunks were passing out. It was the bootleggers dream. Then Ralph decided that since everybody was well and truly lubricated that maybe he could ‘maximize profits’ by thinning out the mix a bit. He left his station at the bar and started to head upstairs to water down the mix.

Title: The Beginning of the End

So he headed up the stairs to tub alley, oil lamp in hand. Then things went all sideways. He opened the door to the hallway and squinted into the darkness. The fumes hit him like a juniper brick. The lamp flared. His eyes watered and then twitched back and forth in their sockets like two rodents trying to find a way out. As he entered the first cubicle he tripped over something and sent the lamp flying, which then smashed on the side of tub one and started it on fire.

The something he tripped over groaned from its position on the floor. It was Colin, who had the same idea as his brother but had stopped in the doorway, going down on his hands and knees, to look for and pick up some of the sequins that had started to melt off his dress when he encountered the fumes.

They helped each other up by pushing each other out of the way. Flames now spread from the room and enveloped the top of the stairs. Ralph and Colin ran for the far exit which was unfortunately now insurmountably blocked with a number of discarded alcohol jugs, old juniper bushes, and a pile of used plaid material.

At the end of the hallway they turned just in time to see the flash of the first tub exploding, sending it crashing through the wall and across the hall to the next room (showering sparks as it went) then upwards through the roof. It exploded in the air like star bursts on firecracker day. The second tub caught fire. Colin and Ralph looked at one another and said simultaneously, “Oh shit!” and started to look for cover as bathtub after bathtub crashed through the walls and crisscrossed across the hallway before arcing into the sky and detonating.

The only place they could find that might offer some cover was the infamous tub 24, the plaid tub.

Stop time.

Title: Meanwhile… back at the entranceway.

At that very instant the place was surrounded by federal agents, the Untouchables, led by (not Elliot Ness but by another man unwaivering in his Elliotness) one Elliot Campbell. He had been tracking the brothers for years looking for an opportunity to bust them. He claimed that if the brothers had just raped sheep and rustled women like all the other Campbells they would have been left alone, but these two had gone too far. They were truly sick individuals and really gave the clan a bad name. And they smelled bad.




After years of frustration his dream was about to come true, the trap was now set and he was ready to pounce.

Just as he was about to kick the door in (more for style than anything else because it was unlocked and unguarded, but g-men like doing that kind of thing) something crashed through the roof and exploded in the air making him duck and all the other g-men look for cover. Then the door slammed open in his face and the crowd from inside rushed out, trampling Elliot underfoot.

The crowd, hearing the explosion from above, ran screaming from the club. Outside they slowed and then stopped and began to watch the fireworks and the fun.

Tub after tub crashed outward through the roof and into the air where they exploded in a spectacular shower of colors and sparks accompanied by the ooh’s and aah’s of the crowd outside, jostling with g-men and soon firefighters and police officers too, sharing what remained of their drinks with the forces of moderation.

Elliot Campbell was lucky enough to only sustain a bruised moustache in the trampling.

Title: Plaid Comet Strikes Barge says witness.

Quantum physics states that no two particles can occupy the same space at the same time. That was basically the dilemma of the brothers, both trying to climb into the tub and push the other out. When part of the ceiling over their heads collapsed they threw themselves into the tub together. Just imagine two fat men trying to hide in a tub full of plaid gin. (Sorry, on second thought, don’t try to imagine. It would only warp your mind leaving you in a catatonic state.). The finale finally came. The plaid tub exploded through the roof in a plaid plume. The resulting shockwave collapsed the remainder or the building, destroying the old convent. The tub arced out over the lake in a shallow trajectory trailing plaid patterned sparks behind. Everyone outside applauded.

Luckily everyone had escaped the building and no one was hurt. The inside of the convent was another matter. Everything was cooked, destroyed, burnt, char broiled, melted, slagged, re-burnt and reduced to ash from the explosions and the subsequent fire. All the booze, all the equipment, all the evidence was destroyed in the fire.

Afterward Elliot Campbell and the Untouchables couldn’t find the brothers or their remains. It was really too bad because up until then they had imagined all these unthinkable and unmentionable things they had wanted to do to the Campbells if they had managed to ever get a hold of them.

As for the brothers, the porcelain rocket skipped across the water with them still in it. If you were there to hear you could have heard the brothers making sounds like ‘ouch’ and ‘aak’ as the tub skidded over the water. The tub finally crashed into a garbage scow, well not really crashed, more like thudded into the grease and stink and steaming refuse on the barge.

The night returned to quiet. The water was like glass. A lite mist (fewer calories than regular mist) danced across the waters. The moon itself finally came out of hiding and gave a silvery glow to the world below. If you had been standing on the lake, which would be a remarkable miracle, and still standing after the stink from the barge hit you, or maybe if you had had a broken nose as a kid and couldn’t smell anything anyway, you could have looked out over the water and seen this scow with it’s heap of rotting garbage silhouetted against the moon and watched two dark masses burrowing out of the heap.

If you could have stood there on the water without upchucking you would have heard…

“Are you O.K.? Have you got all your bits and pieces?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Hey, pull my finger.”

“Put that finger down. No I’m not going to pull it. You’ll only make the garbage stink.”

Silence.

“You know I think we should stay away from Chicago.”

“Right.”

“There’s lots of cops looking for us right now and Al Colon that we owe money to for all the alcohol.”

“Right.”

“And then there was that old lady.”

Chuckle, “And her cow”.

“Now that was a fire.”

“So Chicago’s out. Where are we going to go?”

“Let’s go to New York. I hear there’s this market thing, I think it’s called a stock market and people pay money for stuff not even made yet.”

“Really, like?”

“Pig fat belly’s not born yet. They call it futures or something.”

“Right.”

“We could sell Campbell Brothers wine futures.”

“What, for crap we haven’t even made yet? Cool.”

“They’ll never know what hit them.”

“RIGHT.”


So that's that. Whew.

2005 - Blue Fog and Dry Heaves

Well, we've certainly gotten into the spirit of the stories over the last few years, as well as getting into spirits of another sot, I mean sort. Here are two more examples, one story dealing with a subject that has become part of our myth and legend, Atlantis, and the other about an actual historical event, the distruction of Port Royal.

I hope you enjoy them.

Blue Fog

Ralph and I have done many things over the course of years and have had many jobs to support ourselves and our families in that time. Within the last five years however we have both become Greyhound coach operators and, just to suggest that there might be some weird psychic inbreeding goin on, in actual fact our oldest brother is a retired Greyhound driver as well.

Anyway, because it's what we both do now, elements of the job have literally again entered the picture. That explains the flipped Greyhound bus.

The story here got encredibly wordy and just about completely filled up the brochure. The story goes:

The Campbell Brothers Winery Presents

Blue Fog

...and the discovery of the ancient civilization of Atlantis.

Running was a word the Campbell brothers, Ralph and Colin, understood. So were the words fleeing, jurisdiction, and jail. It seemed that most of the police forces that they had contact with also know some words, like apprehend, arrest, and excessive force. It’s amazing how many people share vocabulary. It’s also amazing just how many people the Campbell brothers have outraged in their career as entrepreneurial providers of illegal fermented beverages, which meant that they were running out of places to run.

They decided that they were frankly tired of all this fleeing and needed a rest. In fact what they really wanted was a vacation, “And why not drive to Europe?” one of them suggested. The other nodded in agreement, “They don’t know us yet.”

They realized that it might be a long drive and so decided to get a vehicle that was used to covering long distances. They stole a bus, just drove it off a platform at the local terminal while nobody was looking. They stashed in it a couple barrels of home brewed wine and a bunch of baggies of their homemade chili. They then drove to the lakeshore where they realized a fundamental flaw in their plan. Colin said to Ralph, “Hey, you know if we drive this thing into the water it’s just going to sink and then we’re out of a bus and no European vacation.”

Ralph replied, “Well we’re not going to drive it into the water, that would be nuts. We’ll go off the end of a dock instead.”

Colin agrees, “That makes it different.”

So the brothers drove the bus off a dock. The bus hit the water nose first, flipped on its back and started floating away from shore, out across Lake Ontario, starting the long journey down the St. Lawrence. There was a sort of peace for the time because the Campbells had knocked themselves out.

Later on, when the Campbells were, for the lack of a better word, conscious, they floated over a yacht club and in the resulting splintering, cracking, snapping and screaming managed to snag a mast, some rope, and a couple of oars from the debris, so they rigged the bus into something like a primitive galley.

They floated out into the Atlantic Ocean and hung a right. Colin, who was now doing most of the rowing (and complaining about it often and loudly), said that they needed to get some help, and some different food because the chili was starting to eat through the plastic.

The chili by this time was well beyond the acceptable and safe limits for human consumption. It had taken on several lives of its own. The Campbells recognized this fact and so at the next island they bumped into they waded ashore in order to restock, and to find crew if they could. The only thing that they could find that looked strong and didn’t seem to mind the Campbells, at least Colin, very much was a rather large orangutan that wandered out of the jungle onto the beach. The Campbells thought they had it made and could now relax.




What the brothers didn’t notice was that a couple of rats also snuck on board.

Ralph ordered the orangutan, which he’d named Fred, to lay in supplies. These ended up consisting of several bunches of bananananas (a word easy to start writing but sometimes difficult to tell where it should end), coconuts, and assorted greenery. Ralph then tried to boss Fred around, like he did his brother, to find them some more people food too. Fred grabbed hold of Ralph and hoisted him up by an ankle. He then shook him while waggling his finger in Ralph’s upside down face, until that idea went away. He then tossed Ralph aside, and started loading leaves to build himself a nest.

The stowaway rats made themselves right at home. They moved into a now empty wine barrel and dragged in all sorts of rags and stuff to make themselves comfortable. They also discovered the several baggies of chili. After eating some of this, and lapping at some wine leaking from the other barrel, they fell into a contented coma.

Over the next few days their home, the barrel, started to give off a strange blue luminous fog, and every now and then little balls of blue fire would shoot from the mouth and explode in the air. This made it somewhat difficult for either of the brothers to approach. They had to go without booze for a whole week.

In the night, in addition to explosions, there were also noises of a different nature coming from the barrel. It sounded like tiny little party favours and giggles, and little rat bongos that kept the brothers from getting any sleep.

Colin asked his big brother what they should do.

Ralph thought a moment and then said, “I think we should name the rats.”

“Name the rats what?”

“How about Spark and Plug.” And so it was.




They set off again, this time to cross the ocean. Ralph avoided Fred now because he was frankly afraid of him. He spent most of his time driving the bus from the top of the makeshift mast. Colin and Fred seem to get along fine and when Colin took breaks from rowing (Fred refused to do it) they would sit together and pick lice off one another, or play checkers. Fred also shared food with him.

After a couple of days up the mast Ralph decided he needed something in his diet, like food: fish, seaweed, anything. He shinnied down the mast, snuck past the napping orangutan and down into the cabin of the bus. There he took out a line, put a hook on the other end and baited it with one of the dead bugs that had been asphyxiated by the blue fog. He then opened one of the roof hatches of the bus, now the hull, in order to fish. Water started pouring in.

Colin came running in and said, “You idiot, you have to open the other hatch as well so that the water can run out too.” He does. The bus sinks faster. When the main cabin fills with water Colin, Ralph, Fred, Spark and Plug all fight over gulps of air by sticking their heads up into the hole of the toilet at the rear of the bus. They all end up coated in blue.

Now even though bus is sub spelled backwards they are not one in the same thing. The vehicle they were now trapped in had more in common with a cement block than an underwater craft. Everything looked dark for the adventurers and if they could have seen it would have looked like the end.

Fate, karma, or something even nastier, played a hand. The Campbells didn’t die. No living creature was harmed during the sinking of this bus. Just before the last of the air gave out, the bus met some sort of a force field and slipped through like a hot dildo through jello. The nose of the bus touched ground, the rear jutted through the force field so the bus was at something like a 45 degree angle. The door opened and out gushed water, two brothers, two rats, and an orangutan.

Slowly getting to their feet the brothers think that they must have died and were now in heaven. They looked around to see soft glowing light, the green of many living things, beautiful architecture, and beside the bus an incredibly large gold statue of what must have been a god or something, with a pitchfork held in one regal hand.

There was also a crowd of people now gathering around them, beautiful babes and serene and stately men apparently happy to see them. Odd.

What the Campbells didn’t realize, because they had never read that particular comic book, was that these were the people of the lost civilization of Atlantis, which according to legend had sunk below the waters some five thousand years ago.

The rats took one quick look at everything and then scampered back aboard the bus to rearrange their now freshly rinsed home and to get down to some serious eating, drinking and bongoing.

The Atlantians, for their part, looked at the strange craft, and then regarded the crew, the two blue hominids, and the blue tinted hairy creature (that must be the officer and leader of this expedition). They could come up with only one explanation, the craft and crew were from another world, and these were alien visitors. They wouldn’t understand just how wrong they were but still how alien the two brothers really were until it was much too late. Then the Atlantians made the biggest mistake of all by welcoming them to their city. They began to prepare a banquet and declared a holiday in their honour.

Of course neither group could understand the other. For the Campbells the language sounded not only like Greek to them, but early Greek at that. In an effort to be understood there was much repeating of words and pointing and pantomiming by both parties which, lets face it, leaves lots of room for misunderstanding, which the Campbells are notoriously good at.

They were guided into a large domed building nearby where many types of food and drink were arrayed on a large table. Ralph and Colin, once they checked out the spread and tasted one or two items (Colin said they tasted like bait) decided to ignore all that and spent the next few hours nodding a lot at the Atlantians as they talked and determinedly getting swacked on some really primo hooch that they found.

Suddenly from outside there was an explosion that rocked the building. Everyone rushed outside, although the brothers were moving quite a bit slower than the others by then. What they saw when the foul smelling smoke finally cleared (causing much gagging and vomiting) was a charred piece of ground around the bus that was even now filling up with an evil looking and smelling blue fog. Something like a small angry comet arced from the doorway, hit the fog, which then exploded with incredible force and noise.

From the inside of the bus could be heard hiccups and a laughter so high it was almost inaudible, and the sound of tiny drums. The Atlantians fell back in fear thinking, ‘What demon is this, what vengeful god have we awoken’?

An extremely drunk Ralph steps forward and made ‘it’s O.K.’ signs with his hands, then motions the Atlantians to wait just a second. He approaches the bus and waits just to one side of the door for one of the explosions to occur and then quickly (for him) steps inside. After a few seconds he comes triumphantly out carrying two rats, one in each hand, a jug under one arm, a baggie under the other. The people start to cluster around him as he introduces everyone to Spark and Plug.

Colin takes the two rats from him and then, grinning like a drunk showing off a party trick, he strokes the two which start giving off sparks. Ralph takes a bit of food from the baggie and feeds each one, then gives them a bit of wine to drink, and then stands back. Colin holds the rats up and bows to the people, then starts to rub the two together vigorously, to the Atlantian’s horror, until sparks started showering off their fur. Then the two rats farted a long stream of blue fog. The sparks ignited the gas, which then burned everything in its path like a berserk welding torch, singeing the beards of many Atlantians who were standing too close. The beautiful golden statue of the patron god of the city got a face full of ignited blue fog and melted. It ended up looking like the figure had spent considerable time bobbing for french-fries.

Although the rats seemed to be unhurt, and rather relieved by the looks on their tiny rodent faces, the Atlanteans themselves were not amused. They considered what they had witnessed to be rude, vulgar, dangerous, and downright inhumane to the rats.

Now the brothers might have gotten away with all this even then (for the people had no real understanding of crime and punishment), were it not for the damage done to the golden statue of Poseidon, the god and protector of Atlantis. The defilement required sacrifice, human, well nearly human, anyway the Campbells would have to do.

They decide to give the brothers a taste of their own medicine. They wedge them into two empty wine barrels, lash them together by a short lead, and then force the brothers to eat their own concoctions, the remaining chili and last of the wine. The Atlantians quickly retreat when Colin and Ralph’s stomachs start to grumble and they begin to fart filling the bus with a most obnoxious blue fog.

Fred, standing nearby holding the rats, rubs them together rather idly. SparkPlug ignites, the blue fog ignites, and Colin and Ralph are blasted through the bus like a cannon. They shoot through the water and are eaten by a vortex that has mysteriously appeared and centered over the rear of the bus.

Fred could swear that just before the moment of combustion the statue of the melted face god had come to life and had waved its trident in a motion above the bus. Then, in the vortex, there appeared to him a cheesy montage of old newspaper headlines spinning into view, each dated progressively earlier in time. He had a good guess as to why. The brothers had been blasted through time so they couldn’t reveal the secret of Atlantis. He was going to tell the others but thought better of it and just said, “Oook” to himself and shrugged.

The Atlantians, who had been thinking about finally revealing themselves to the world above, swore to stay hidden for another 5,000 years. The orangutan and rats were of course allowed to stay. At least they had gotten rid of the vermin.

Colin and Ralph end up alive, bobbing on the sea like a couple of corks, connected by the short tether. Their farts make the sea toxic, keeping sharks away, and propels their barrels in little circles around one another. They spend most of a day and a night bobbing alone on the waves, constantly swearing at and blaming each other for their misfortune. Then, shortly before dark on the second day they are spied and eventually picked up by an old wooden ship as it happens to be sailing past, the Dry Heaves.

The brochure also had this disclaimer:

Blue Fog
like Blue Nun, only not…
but after you drink it you wish
you'd had nun.

Brought to you and then dropped in a hurry by
The Campbell Brothers.
Now that you have it, it’s your problem.

Ralph and Colin Campbell
Two men who have spent over a century
Drunk.

Dry Heaves

Again Ralph and I used the brochure format for this story, and we needed the space too.

The actual background for the label this year came from an image on the net, actually one of a series of images which had been produced by 3D rendering software. I believe that there were images that you could download for wallpaper for your computer. Ralph and I were added, again using Photoshop, as well as our pirate flag, the title, and so on.

The image for the brochure cover was a close up of the same label image focusing more on Ralph and I. There were more shots of us in pirate's gear throughout the story.

So here is the story of:

Dry Heaves

The Destruction of Port Royal



The Pirates Campbell

It was early in June of the year 1692 when a beat up old ship, the ‘Dry Heaves’ slipped quietly into the harbour of Port Royal, Jamaica. At this time Port Royal was the largest English town and the most economically important English Port in the Americas. Little did the sailors and residents of the town realize that the town now was doomed, it was caput, it was all over but the shouting (which would start soon) for on that boat were the infamous pirates the Campbell brothers, Captain Ralph and First Mate Colin carrying a worthless cargo of pirate baby booties.

Port Royal at this time was a bustling community: prosperous, multicultural, lively, and boisterous. With its well-protected harbour and deep water close to shore it was an ideal spot for large vessels to be docked and serviced. Trade flourished and so did privateering. Piracy was officially sanctioned until 1670 and then continued in one form or another until the 18th century, mainly due to the lure of Spanish gold from the new world. Unfortunately it also attracted the pirates Campbell.

Captain Ralph likes the life of the pirate because it means he can say ‘aargh’ a lot, and boss other people around, particularly his brother. He also likes the eye patch thing and thinks it makes him look cool so he decided to wear two, thereby inventing the first set of completely in the dark glasses. This meant, of course, that he couldn’t see where he was going and kept banging his head on obstacles and knocking himself out, so he got himself a seeing eye duckie (who also wore a patch), and put it on his shoulder. It didn’t help – he kept getting knocked out, but he kept it there anyway. It turned out that the people in bars felt sorry for the duckie and kept buying it drinks, which the brothers would then sponge off the duck.



First Mate Colin wasn’t sure what he wanted to look like – what made him look pirate like. He grew a beard and that helped because it hid part of his face. He wore earrings that he had picked up for two dollars in Jamaica, which he figured weren’t too bad for a buck an ear. He tried the hook on the hand thing – with a corkscrew instead of a hook – but he got dizzy opening bottles so he ditched it. He tried all sorts of stockings to go with the nautical theme wardrobe and found out he liked something called ‘fishnet stockings’ the best. No animal would sit on his shoulder unless it was nailed there – and the nails ruined his shirts. His only pet was one solitary fruit fly named Filo who constantly followed him around. He did have one saving grace, he was a natural delouser, and rats fled the ship in panic, but while in port this also made him a dewomaner. Only wine liked him – up to a point. It would take all his money and then it too would suddenly leave him.



Captain Ralph has often told Colin he actually is the head of the boat, and then chuckles. He never explains to Colin what he means. He just won’t let him pilot the boat is all. And he won’t lend him the hat.

Since they discovered that their cargo of pirate booties was useless, the Campbells had to come up with a scheme to make some money to pay for supplies, dock fees, refit the ‘Heaves’ and still be able to tie on a good drunk. They decided to put on a big party and invite the inhabitants, for a small fee, to a big feed of ‘Campbell’s spicy buccan and beans in sauce’ (chili) and homemade wine.

Now, in case you didn’t know, the term buccaneer, or buccan eater (which also gives us the word bacon), came from the word for the wooden frames for roasting, smoking and drying meat over fire – but with no money up front the Campbell’s had to get creative. Ralph stole the meat from the discount sales racks, and Colin made wine from the red berry dye that he had left over from all those booties, and we don’t know what else.

The Disaster

Like clockwork, after just about twelve hours, everyone who had partaken in the meal now had to share the consequences and outhouses in their misery, releasing copious amounts of methane gas that drifted and collected over the port area. One old tar, thinking the worst was surely over, lit his pipe igniting the clouds of volatile gas, which blew the town apart, set off an earthquake, and most of the town sank into the sea.

At 11:43 a.m. on the 7th of June in 1692, 33 acres (66 percent) of the “storehouse and treasury of the West Indies” sank into Kingston Harbour in the following earthquake. Nearly 2,000 perished in the quake, another 3,000 died of injuries and sickness in the following days. Looting and scavenging broke out. The Campbells swore they were never there.

The Campbells sneaked out of port in the Dry Heaves and headed for parts unknown (about them). The fleet that tried to follow couldn’t locate them – the Campbells had hid under a reef – but if they had caught them their fate would have been worse than walking the plank, they would have been forced to eat their own food.

The Campbells became referred to as those buccan idiots, and for the victims of the victuals the burning diarrhea became known as buccan assholes. Their flag, the skull and crossed spoons, became a symbol of fear and great gastric distress.



Port Royal never recovered. It had a revival of sorts until 1703 when the Campbells came back to see if the incident had been forgotten. It wasn’t. The resulting mob scene and pursuit ended up setting off a fire that ravaged the remainder of the town. Earthquakes and hurricanes continued to ravage the area, completing the job that the brothers had started. A severe storm, a hurricane, and two earthquakes hit Port Royal in 1722. The Campbell brothers were blamed. Port Royal, as it once was, disappeared for the last time.

The Campbell brothers meanwhile had headed out to sea and were well on their way to creating another disaster.





The Campbell Brothers Winery

Brought (up) to you by Colin and Ralph Campbell, two men who have spent more than a century drunk, and relieved themselves in the seven seas.

2004 - Green Hornet and The Borg

Now here we really get into it. The deep stuff that is.

Again there’s no easy way to lay out the complete package of what was produced for the Christmas wine this year. We produced the labels using Photoshop incorporating images from various sources. The Green Hornet featured the old 1972 GMC Sierra Grand pick-up truck that both Ralph and I owned at one time. It was on its last tires (the same as last legs only more round and rubbery) and we thought it needed commemoration, or cremation, or demolition, actually we couldn’t decide which. Anyway, it was the vehicle (literally) that got us into space – again.

The label following that, and its accompanying story, are about what happened once we were spaced out, I mean in outer space.

The Last Ride of the Green Hornet

Here's the story:


It was green, but not a pretty green. It was green gone bad. Ralph said it was green like sphinx snot. Nobody disagreed. It was his truck, a 1972 GMC pick-up. He called it the Green Hornet.

It wasn’t much of a truck. It was rusty and falling apart. In fact it was the rust, to a large degree, which was holding the truck together. The heater didn’t work (there was a nest of mice who had colonized it a few years back and the brothers, particularly Ralph, didn’t want to disturb them because of what had happened during the notorious ‘squirrel incident’), the passenger door had to be opened from the outside, the driver’s window was pooched and wouldn’t roll up if somehow it had gotten rolled down, which it couldn’t, but that was O.K. because it wouldn’t sit on the track anyway and had to be wedged into place. But worst of all the radio wouldn’t work so Colin had to put up with Ralph singing (the closest approximation of the noise that emitted from his mouth) an old Stompin Tom song, just the one, the same one, over and over and over again. Tillsonburg.

In short, the truck was a mess, but the truck was the brothers’ only and mostly reliable source of transportation. It would run, usually, except when it was wet or cold, or on days with an ‘r’ in it it seemed. For once the block heater did its job and the Green Hornet had started. Just their luck.

It was also cold, damned cold that day. It was 40 degrees below, and it didn’t matter which scale you used, Fahrenheit or Celsius, it was all the same thing, damned cold.

Ralph was driving the Green Hornet up a treacherous incline from their de-base camp, along a piece of icy road that climbed a number of switchbacks. In the back of the truck’s box was a mini tank filled and sloshing away with their latest wine invention. A ‘sampling tube’ the brothers had installed led into the truck cab, and dangled in Ralph’s lap (his hands were full with driving at the moment). From it’s end escaping droplets formed a little wet spot on the seat between his legs that sort of steamed and smoked and dissolved upholstery.

In the cab of the truck it was stupid cold, which is way beyond just ‘damned cold’. In fact it was colder inside the truck than outside. It was so cold that the condensation from their breath froze on the windows and made it impossible to see.

Colin was using the cutting torch on the windshield, along with a scraper, trying to keep a patch of the window clear when the truck hit a major bump. The torch wand flew backward, hit Colin in the face, and then fell into Ralph’s lap. In a puff of smoke and accompanied by the smell of burnt denim and hair, the flame lit the little puddle with a whump, and then the fire, like a lit fuse, traveled up the hose to the source. It ignited the contents of the mini tank at the spigot, which then blossomed in ultraviolet fire.

The two brothers were thrown back into their seats by the acceleration. Ralph’s eyeballs were pushed so far back into his skull that he was able to see no one was home.

They figured that the truck would have broken the land speed record were it not for the fact that the tires had melted and then the vehicle had lifted off the ground and was heading due up, heading for the stars. Unbelievably the truck not only achieved escape velocity but was still accelerating due to the potency of the fuel, faster and faster away from the earth when suddenly, in Colin’s words, the whole of space started to look like dry heaves, from the inside, and the truck ripped a hole in the space time continuum, Ralph said it ripped itself another *hole, and the Green Hornet, the two Campbell brothers, and the nest of mice, vanished into another space.

What happened? It wasn’t a warp drive they had invented, although they were well and truly warped by the time it had occurred. It wasn’t the fabled ion drive, or the plasma drive, or any one of a number of possible cool sounding science-fictiony types of technologically advanced engines they had stumbled upon – and stumble is really a good choice of description when talking about anything the brothers did. There was only one possible name that you could attach to this remarkable propulsion device; there was only one reasonable thing to call it. The brothers had invented the drunk drive.

And they should have died, there’s no two ways about it. They should have died in a crash, from the crushing acceleration, from the lack of oxygen, from the vacuum of space, from the cosmic radiation, from a million other things, but they didn’t. Go figure.

So earth’s first intergalactic space ship ended up being this ugly green thing, in origin a terrestrial ground utility vehicle, actually an old pick-up truck, and it materialized in, as they say, a far away galaxy.

The life forms inside, two stunned humans and 5 confused rodents, were bundled all together in a tarp trying to keep out the deathly cold, trying to breathe from the trickle of oxygen coming from the cutting torch wand. It wasn’t easy. Colin had just farted.

Wrapped in the tarp they couldn’t see where they were going, which was O.K. because they couldn’t have said where they’d been, and they couldn’t have turned their ‘ship’ anyway, and they couldn’t have run if they wanted to. Once and again the Campbell Brothers were up the gravity well without any visible means of propulsion.

But something saw them, and tracked them, and reached out with an invisible force to draw them in. It was a ship, a gigantically huge, mind numbingly biggest ever kind of big cube thing, and it now had them.

Ralph and Colin Campbell, two brothers who until now resisted everything, were about to find where resistance was useless.


On the back panel of this brochure is the following:

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to person or persons who may or may not be brothers, whether they claim to be related or not, is expressly intended.

and

Ralph and Colin Campbell
Two men who have spent over fifty years,
both light years and the regular kind,
drunk.

Borg Booze - Assimilation Wine

On the Borg label you can see those two lovable characters, well us really, done up in whiteface (like shitface only cleaner) and masked. It’s amazing now just how much we’ve gotten into this whole Christmas wine and label thing, and what we’ll do now to put ourselves into the action. I actually sent away to the States for the Borg mask and make-up kit and we spent quite a bit of time prepping for the shots.

In the cube spaceship background that we superimposed our images over there are actually parts of the truck if you look for them.

For the brochure’s main image we used a different shot, one of the Queen Borg, and with the pick-up truck in the background again.


The story ran:

The Borg had caught the Campbell brothers. They had been assimilated and were cyborgs now, half human and half machine. They had wires and tubes running in and out of their bodies. Ralph kept saying the change was for the good, but more tubing would be nice.

But the Borg were now having problems. Always until this time they had thought and acted as one, as a whole, as one mind, but for the first time the collective was becoming confused.

First they, or rather it, couldn’t understand why nothing taken from the captured green vehicle worked. Everything failed to function, even as hull plaiting. It was all so illogical.

Secondly, the behaviour of the newly assimilated biological units was even more confusing. They were supposed to be connected to the hive but they wouldn’t mind. They not only gave the collective mind a migrane, but they ran around doing bizarre un-Borglike things, playing practical jokes, refusing to do what they were expected. They wouldn’t even respond to any name except the ones they had given themselves.

Colin called himself Smorgas the Borg. He would giggle and run off down the catwalks back to his recharge chamber, which he was rewiring to boost the signal into the pleasure centres of his brain. He was also seen in various sections of the ship taking pipes and parts for his project.

Ralph chose the name Ernest Borg Nine for himself. He also became self-appointed leader of the small creatures that were also assimilated from the truck, the MiceBorg 5, mainly because he was bigger than they were. With them he started the MouseBorg Shooter Bar with him as owner and bouncer.

Numbers of the crew of the Borg ship had started to attend the bar on a regular basis, often ignoring their other duties.

Ernest Borg Nine then introduced cards and games of chance to the club. Smorgas introduced something called pleasure booths.

Since the Borg didn’t have money, the brothers had instituted a kind of Borg barter system, and were soon amassing quite a wealth of gems, unusual artifacts and weapons from the countless cultures that the Borg had subjugated and then assimilated.

The Queen of the hive was aware of the headache in the collective mind but couldn’t for the longest time pinpoint the reason. Thoughts in a certain area were murky. Soon she could not ignore the pain because it was interfering with the normal operations of the cube ship. With effort she pinpointed the source, the recent arrivals. She decided to become personally involved, and had the brothers brought to her chamber. The Brothers Borg arrived in time to watch as she joined her upper and lower selves.

The Queen had by this time compiled a long list of the deviant behaviour of these creatures. During the lengthy interview she told them that she was incensed by their un-Borglike behaviour and it would stop. The production of this thing called alcohol would stop. Gambling would stop. Resistance was futile.

She then had them reprogrammed, twice, then twice more.

Smorgas the Borg left the audience with a slightly glazed smile on his face.

Not long after ‘the audience’ occurred the Queen’s lower body unit started to disappear for extended intervals of time, leaving her stranded in her chambers and very short tempered. The body unit would re-appear sometime later dressed in high heels, garter belt and stockings (all this stuff coming from who knows where) stinking of the products of combustion and fermentation, smoke and alcohol. The Queen now had some idea where the root of the problem lay.

An irate Queen, eager for confrontation, merged with the lower half of herself after it had returned home after one of these absences. She discovered, much to her alarm, that she had an almost irresistible urge to do things like ‘get down and boogie’ or ‘do the nasty’, whatever they were. The Queen was not amused. She left the chamber in pursuit of the brothers.

She found out the bar was not only operating, but expanding still. She entered it during something called ‘happy hour’. It was dark and full of smoke. Rhythmic noise and flashing lights assaulted her. She found herself starting to move in time to the sound, to the beat. It took a considerable effort of will to stop. The noise grated on her nerves, and out of the din assaulting her the only word she seemed to understand sounded something like TillsonBorg. She was not pleased.

As her eyes and sensors adjusted to the interior gloom she noticed a holographic advertising display near the entrance where a holo of her lower portion gyrated to the beat. She was shocked to discover that ‘it’ was a headliner at the club and went by the name of Leggy Lydia. She was really not amused. She approached the image and started to scan the smaller words on the flickering display and discovered that Smorgas was her lower half’s manager. She literally steamed.

The Queen then noticed several unusual looking recharge stations located in corners of the space, some were occupied by Borg who were quivering and clutching at themselves in ecstatic trance. Steam turned to sparks.

When the MiceBorg spotted her they dropped the shooters they were serving and disappeared into the darkness.

The brothers were captured and again brought before the Queen. In addition to their previous uncorrected behaviour more new and alarming information about their activities was beginning to come to light.

Ernest Borg Nine had started a petition among the crew to have him elected as shop steward for a first collective agreement. This would not be tolerated.

Smorgas the Borg was converting more and more of the ship to produce intoxicants which he was then passing on to his brother for the club as well as introducing ‘samples’ into the crew’s recharge stations. This would really not be tolerated.

Ernest and Smorgas, it was decided, were making life on the Borg cube intolerable.

The Borg, who had by now traced from which galaxy, sun, and world the creatures had come, were at this instant entering the Sol system in order to assimilate the planet and claim the resources. After seeing what the creatures from this planet were like firsthand, just these, and how their machinery never worked properly, they changed their mind and decided not to touch the planet with a thousand meter tractor beam, and further decided to head for the farthest, and I do mean farthest, reaches of the galaxy.

The humans were ejected from the ship and the collective, along with the MiceBorg and truck too. They were cast adrift circling Uranus.

When they had gone the Borg gave a collective sigh of relief.


On the back panel of the brochure was the following disclaimer:


This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to person or persons who may or may not be brothers, whether they claim to be related or not, is expressly intended.

2003 - Pull'a My Finger and The Death of Socrates

Well, you know sometimes it’s hard to put things into web format that show the extent of what we did for particular labels in particular years. This year we produced the labels and for once followed the KISS philosophy (Keep it simple, stupid.). Then we made cards to go along with each of the labels, image on the front, story in the middle, and our motto on the back. We punched holes in the corner of the cards so that we could hang them from the necks of the wine bottles that we handed out as Christmas presents. Font and layout made important contributions to the presentation as a whole. Unfortunately something goes missing in its translation into this format yet I think you should enjoy these labels as they are presented here.

Photographically and graphically, and considering the place where we started from, they are becoming increasingly sophisticated due to improvements in available technology and expendable resources (money that is).

That doesn’t mean that the stories have gotten away from potty humour however. Take a look at what I mean.

Pull'a My Finger

Here we just manipulated the famous portion of the ceiling fresco created by 'Mickey' dealing with the moment God created man, only the hands were brought closer together so that it looked like man was going to pull God's finger. Here's the story:

PULL’A MY FINGER

“Pull’a my finger.”

“I’m’a no pull’a you finger.”

“Pull’a my finger. Just’a once.”

“No Ralphael, I’m’a no gonn’a pull’a you finger. You drink’a da vino, you gett’a da gas.”

“Com’a on, pull’a my finger.”

“No! Now look’a here. I’m’a talk with this nice Mr. Buonarroti. He gott’a problem.”

“He pull’a my finger?”

“Leave’a him alone, Ralphael. Now Mickey, I’m’a sorry, what’a you say?”

“I’m a just spend six’a month paint. It’s’a all’a most done. I gott’a the angel, I gott’a the cherub, I gott’a the saint. She’s a beauty.”

“Pull’a my finger.”

“Ignore’a him. So what’sa wrong?”

“I need’a just one’a more thing, one’a small touch to be finish. The moment when’a God creat’a man.”

“Pull’a my finger.”

Sigh. “Look’a here. You stop’a bug me if I pull’a you finger.”

“You bet’a not.”

“Shoo, Mickey. An’a me an’a Collio help’a you finish. We bring’a some’a our vino too.”

“All’a right. I’m a pull’a you finger.” And he does. And Ralphael farts. As Mickey passes out he says, “That’s’a it! Eureka.”

“Shoo do.”

So once Mickey regained consciousness, Ralphael and Collio go to help their new friend finish the job, which is why it took a further three and a half years for Michaelangelo to finish painting the Sistine Chapel.


Nice, eh?

The rear of this card with our motto looked like this:

The Death of Socrates

Ralph and I finally make it into the label pictures. We dressed up in gaudy bedsheets and then I photoshoped the results into the reproduction of the painting.

Here's the scoop:

The Death of Socrates

It is said that history belongs to the victorious. That may be true in most instances but there are also times when history is just plain wrong. Sometimes history is a lie, written down by people too ashamed to admit there had been a goof. Facts are distorted, asses covered.

This is certainly the case about the supposed trial and death of the ancient Greek philosopher and teacher Socrates.

In actual fact it was two brothers, Ralphades and Cloinimicus, who were brought up on corruption charges for a whole series of moral and immoral abuses. Socrates, other civic representatives and civil authorities were sitting on the tribunal to judge the crimes of the brothers, sentence them, and mete out immediate justice. The infamous cup containing the poison hemlock was sitting on a table nearby, next to a bottle of the brother’s attic brewed bounty being submitted as evidence.

In one of those classic mix-ups that the brothers are so infamous for Ralphades, somewhat dehydrated from the previous evening’s debacle, absentmindedly (his normal waking state) drank some of the potion of hemlock – to no apparent effect. He did comment to his brother Cloinimicus, as he passed the cup over to his sibling for sampling, that the stuff had quite a nice resin flavour. He then suggested they use it in their next batch of wine, if there ever was a next batch – ‘but not so much rat this time’. Thus ‘Ratsina’ was born.

This wine is like that, only no evergreens were killed in the making of it. Don’t ask about the rats.

Socrates was giving his lengthy speech of condemnation, already in excess of an hour. Mid rant he reached for something to help moisten his dry throat. Cloinimicus, being the helpful kind of reprobate he is, saw him motioning, thought he wanted the evidence bottle, and handed it to the poor guy.

He drank, he died, justice served.

The rest is history, of a sort.


The back of the card featured our motto and looked like this:

2002 - Bottling, Gladiating and Curses

This was the year of extravagance, two labels plus a card. Oh my.

The Night Before Bottling

Ralph, I think, is the instigator. I’ve called him other things in my time but I’ll not mention those here. He seems to be the one who says, “I got it. I got it. How about taking the poem The Night Before Christmas and using that, and there’s these gnomes see, and their names are all the same as the wines we made up. Oh, and a bunny rabbit. There’s got to be a bunny rabbit. And a honey wagon, we got to have one of those.”

New colour cartridge and a fresh ream of image quality paper.

So I sat me down in front of the computer and started to work on the graphic for the Night Before Bottling. I found a really nice Christmassy type of thing in one of those multipurpose printing and picture softwares. I just added a mushroom cloud just over the crest of the hill. I also matched in the shadow.

I thought that if there were a big bang, all the forest critters would stop and look before running from the frightful explosion – of the still if you haven’t read the poem yet.

The footprints I left in, sort of imagining again that the manager of the distillery, whoever, had run for it just before it went up. I think it worked pretty well.

Now for the poem itself.

Ralph started the first rough draft through the traditional poem and then passed it on to me. I happened to have some time right then and so played around with it until it was in the shape you see. It still could benefit from a little work, but there you have it.

The Night Before Bottling

‘Twas the night before bottling, and all through the still
Not a creature was stirring, the vapours would kill;
The racking tubes were hung by the vats without care
In hopes that the Campbell brothers would soon clean up there.

The winos were all trying to break through the slats,
In the hopes to steal ninetyproof out of the vats;
And I, not wanting to be stabbed in the gut,
Had just barred the door and welded it shut,

When out in the yard there was a crash, crump and shatter,
I sprang from the office to see what was the matter.
I went to the safe and drew out all the cash,
Tore open the door and started to dash.

A blaze lit the carnage of the junkyard, you know,
And gave a menacing look to the twisted objects below,
And when the dust settled, what should then be shown,
But a used honey wagon, two brothers, eight gnomes.

The brothers were fighting, they were wobbly and drunk,
And smelled like they both had made love to a skunk.
Rolling like tumbleweeds they clawed and they spat,
Then cursed at the gnomes from the ground where they sat;

“Damn Leadpipe, Gesuntheit, damn you Crashing Boar,
You’ll get yours Zik Puppy, Bearhugger, you whores.
To the top of the tank, you dirty old gnomes,
Now haul away, haul away, bring it all home.”

As dry heaves that before the Wild Turkey fly
When they meet with an obstacle, usually your eye,
So up to the warehouse top the cursers they flew,
With a tanker full of shit, two brothers, gnomes too.

And then a great groaning was heard on that roof
Until the whole aggregation fell into the proof
As I drew out my gun, and was turning around,
My bosses, the Campbells, fell down with a bound.

Ralph was dressed all in denim, from his head to his feet,
And his shoes were all covered with smelly excrete
A couple of chainsaws he had flung on his back
And he looked like a lumberjack just about to attack.

His eyes—how they bloodshot, his smile how scary
His teeth were like pickets, his nose red and blurry
The drool from his mouth flowed down to his toes
And his look turned my complexion as white as the snow

Colin, the stump of a roach he held tight in his teeth
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath
He had a weird bearded face, and a distended pot belly
That shook, when he belched like that flammable jelly.

He was tall, he was chubby, a right nasty old elf,
And I gagged when I saw him, in spite of myself
The look in his eye and the cant of his head,
Soon let me know I’d be better off dead.

They spoke not a word, but went straight to their work
And turned up the propane, then lit it, the jerks
I saw Colin laying his finger inside of his nose,
And as Ralph gave me the finger, up in a cloud like a mushroom they rose

I ran for the hills, the still started to thump and to whistle,
And apart it all blew like the wreck of a missile
But I heard them exclaim, ere they dropped from my sight
“Hope you’re happy you gunky, lets go out and get tight.”


So that’s it in toto, and I don’t mean the dog ate it. As you can probably see, we’re starting to get more confident in our presentation, as well as more rude. I guess you can blame me for wandering away from the family rating.

To end off the card we put this on the rear.


And the squishy looking script on the bottom of that has our 'motto', Two men who have spent more that half a century... drunk.

All that and we haven’t even made it to the actual labels yet.