Sacrilegious Wine (2008)

The second idea that we came up with was much more typical of the genre (Hey, do we get to be a genre now? Cool.) and had to deal with the merry mayhem caused by the Campbell brothers throughout a rather warped version of history. In this one they actually got to be brother brothers.

Sadly I never did get to use all the gag lines that I wanted to use for this. Space restrictions and translation problems conspired to make me stick to the 'kiss' precept, (keep it simple, stupid). I spent considerable time trying to wrestle the story I imagined into proper latin but often came up against a 'you can't get there from here' wall of verbal frustration. I had found a site on the net that translates words and phrases from english into latin but had difficulty making it say what I wanted, getting the concepts across. I am no latin scholar, that's for sure.

Anyway, I also did some searching on the net for illuminated manuscripts and found a couple I liked. I selected one and tried just sort of bulk erasing the text that was there and adding my own but it looked really cheesy. I ended up stripping out the elements that I liked from the manuscript and spent a lot of time just cleaning them up in Photoshop, the edges and detail and all. Then I pasted them back onto a fresh page where I could play with them, stretching and positioning to fit, and then layered in my type(s), the latin text complete with woodcut first letters, a nice sort of celtic/churchy font, then put some of that text in red (for the juicier bits), then I added the translated text in another font on the opposite side of the page (trying to line up one with the other), and then added the page footer in a third font. I had some nice textured paper, a bit reminiscent of parchment, that I printed the design onto for the handouts to go with this wine.

For the label, again I did research on a number of cloisters and abbeys that I thought might look good. Then I added a bit of smoke and fire to the view outside of the colonnade and added in the type. Ralph had come over one day for a visit and brought with him the robe which we took turns donning and then took turns photographing one another. We have little in the way of self respect it would seem.

I don't think anybody will realize just how much work goes into making one of these things. All for fun, not for profit.

So, to the label and the story.

Cam Beul Frater - Sacrilegus Vinum

Here is the label:

And the handout looked like this.

Because the type is impossible to read I’ll include it here. First the Latin (on the left side):

Frater,

Is est per gravis pectoris ut ego loco calamus charta. Mestitia venio nobis. Nostrum monestary, nostrum carus refugium, nostrum domus redigo sepelio. Quicumque somes es acervus, congeries tutela calx.

Duos frater es penitus procul mendum. Duso erant desolo procul sicco ianua, indutus ut parvulus vel sententia videlicet ultum senior. EGO puto iam malum cam beul frater , ut erant notus , erant iustus vultus parumper locus occulto.

Quis es suum vitium?

Bellator , usura blasphemus lingua , ulterius , conicio feces , quod quicumque iustus procul invicem.

A erroris eram no per sino lemma futurus dispensatio of vinum . Vinum eram perussi . Monachus erant tunc servo quispiam fere penitus non amo vinum , sapor amo piscis , quod dat cursor diarrhoea , quod ut est iustus pro satus . Is quoque distraho imbibo vas.

Pugna in crustulum cella quod coepi incendia ut pessum ire nostrum domus eram quoniam duos frater , illa Cam Beuls , attributa ut crustulum pro dies , erant oro super quisnam est futurus piscis piscis friar quod quisnam chip monachus.

Quam anser eram paro in flamma may nunquam exsisto notus.

EGO teneo nos es remitto alius tamen alieno ut, nos mos non verto ceterus letifico . Nos postulo ut deleo orbis terrarum illae vomica. Is est quare EGO scisco vos ut planto lemma excommunicates.

 

And the English translation (on the right):

 

Brother,

It is with heavy heart that I put pen to paper. Misfortune has befallen us. Our Monastery, our beloved refuge, our home, has been reduced to ruin. All that remains are a heap of charred stones.

Two brothers are entirely at fault. The two were abandoned at out door, dressed as infants even though clearly much older. I believe now the evil Campbell (literally crooked  ‘cam’ mouth ‘beul’) brothers, as they were known, were just looking for a place to hide.

What are their crimes?

Fighting, using blasphemous language, farting, throwing feces, and all that just at each other.

A mistake was made by allowing them to be stewards of the wine. The wine was consumed. The monks were then served something almost entirely not like wine, tastes like fish, and gives runny diarrhea, and that is just for starts. It also dissolves the drinking vessels.

The fight in the cooking room which started the fire that destroyed our home was because the two brothers, these Campbells, assigned as cooks for the day, were arguing over who is to be the fish friar and who the chip monk.

How the goose was set on flames may never be known.

I know we are to forgive others but forget that, we will not turn the other cheek. We need to erase the world of this plague. This is why I ask you to make them excommunicates.

And at the bottom of the page the footer reads:

Part of a scroll and lay translation found in the archives of the Order of St. John Incredibilis Foetidus (the Incredibly Smelly) located in Rome. The name Cam Beul has become synonymous with shoddy work, unpalatable wine, and a particularly nasty and pernicious little infection that grows between toes.