Genie With The Light Brown Stain

Because this pamphlet was produced as a joke, and a visual one at that, the impact of the whole is lost if I just type out the words of the inserts panel by panel, even with a description of the visuals. Here's what I've done: I've taken screenshots of the pamphlet and converted the images into something that can be used here which will give you some idea of how the thing looked. I'll also include the text because the type on the images is likely too small to be comfortably read. Okay? Here goes.


The outside of the brochure as a whole looked like this:

This is a detail of the main panel:

The small type reads:

'A tale with drinking involved.' 

 The middle panel of the outside looks like this:

The text reads: 

'This is not a Tim Horton Gift Certificate 

So take that smarmy look off your face, the one that says, hey, this guy is really cheap. Okay, he might be cheap, but it’s much more sinister than that.' 

 In the box on that panel are the words: 'It’s that time of year again, when Ralph and Colin Campbell try to get rid of another load of ‘product’.' 

Underneath that are the words:

 'Please Read Responsibly,' 

And under that:

'This is a Campbell Brothers Product Presentation'. 

 The third panel on that side looks like this:

It reads:

 'Confidentially Speaking 

If you get the chance, casually trash this pamphlet by dropping it into the nearest waste receptacle, 

Or

Boil this sheet in a solution of bleach and hot water for 15 minutes, or until you can’t make out the type anymore. 

It’s pretty tacky anyway. 

Also, If a Campbell hands you one, wash that hand immediately 

And check your pockets for change 

Or another hand being there. 

For the strong of heart keep reading and you might just regret it.' 

 The inside of the brochure looks like this:

The panels, from left to right, read as follows:

'JUST IN CASE YOU’RE STILL INTERESTED, HERE’S A SHORT SYNOPSIS OF THE STORY… 

 This is a story about running and hiding and drinking. Those are pretty much the highlights.. 

Oh and there’s a genie and a hidden cave and a magic lamp if you are into that kind of thing. 

And more drinking. 

And what else am I forgetting to put in here? 

I’ve had a couple of glasses of the light brown stain and I can’t feel my toes anymore. 

 Hello, hello? Is anybody out there? 

APOLOGIA 

Now the reason that you’re getting this brochure instead of a full Campbell Brothers wine story is that the story grew too big, as they sometimes do. It’s now become an epic. 

The story is no longer short enough to fit on the page (unless the type were practically microscopic, but it would be very hard to read at that point). 

What we decided to do is say, ‘forget all that and we’ll just post the whole damn story on the net’, so that’s exactly what we did. 

This brochure is practically an afterthought. 

If you’d like to read the original story please visit us at:

campbellbrothers.blogspot.com

And Ralph and I hope you enjoy the story. 

And, as a bonus, you’ll find all the other wine stories from years past? 

DISCLAIMERS

No resemblance to person or persons alive or semi-alive or tending towards life in any significant way shape or form is intended. 

No squirrels were harmed during the production of this pamphlet. 

All coincidences are just that. 

The brother of the first part hereby declares the brother of the second part to be totally at fault due to obnoxious and drunk behavior at the time. Brother of the second part has filed similar charges against brother of the first part for being drunk and obnoxious at the time and being totally at fault. 

Lawyers for both parties are invited to partake in ritualized personal combat to decide the issue. 

Exits from the court will be sealed until the issue is resolved.' 

The page ends with a repeat of the words from the front of the brochure:

'This is a Campbell Brothers Product Presentation'. 

And there you have it.

Valley of Fire Wine

The label for the bottles of white wine looked like this:

The main page on the outside of the pamphlet reads:

The Campbell Brothers Unfortunately Present

Valley of Fire Wine

Made by two stupid white men.

And for further adventures go to: campbellbrothers.blogspot.com

The inside of the phamphlet started the story:

The Valley of Fire

There are many people who don’t believe in such things as the bogeyman, or even the Campbell Brothers, but there are some who do. These latter wise people use stories of the Campbells as a cautionary tale, to frighten their children into not being, um, well like Campbells really, and to serve as a warning to future generations. This is one of those tales.

The two brothers, Ralph and Colin Campbell, were tried of running from town to town. Their feet where getting sore and the holes in their boots were getting holes too. And, heading west, they were quickly running out of towns. But sounds of pursuit were never far behind them (you could still hear the sounds of throwing up in the distance on a quiet night) and they could only shoulder their remaining sack of wine, the bag of dried squirrel chili, and stumble on, and on.

One day the brothers chanced upon the spur of a new railway. They think that since the track probably knows where it is going maybe they should follow, but which way? They looked on high for a sign. In the distance, to their left, they see the faint outline of a bird circling high in the sky (what they didn’t realize is that it was a buzzard). They decided to go that way.

It was hard trying to get a walking rhythm on the ties. Colin kept falling off. His brother claimed that he never pushed him at all; in fact he never touched him. Neither did the stick he was conveniently carrying.

After some time they came to a small town. Along the main (and only) street, past a miserable looking adobe saloon and close to the tracks was a small shack with delusions of being a train station. Near this was a water tower, a corral (the ‘Not So O.K. Corral’), and on the track, taking on coal and water, a train comprised of a locomotive, its tender and a caboose. In the corral was one old humpbacked mangy horse that watched the brothers with disinterest while munching hay. It too was the only one in town, this being a one horse one.

They came up to the shack and peeked inside, no one there. They looked around and saw a couple of men busy at the train. They cautiously approached the gently streaming behemoth, say ‘howdy’ to the men, and introduce themselves as each other (to possibly confuse identification later). It doesn’t take long for the Campbells to find out that the men are on a short layover to take on fuel and supplies before heading to the railhead and the camp at the end of the line.

While the men finished their chores the brothers decide to see if they can finagle a ride to the end of the line where they might have a chance to unload the rest of the wine and then scamper on, or to look for (that most disgusting four letter word) WORK, if they really, REALLY had to.

They approached the men again and Ralph raises his voice over the sound of building steam, “So, how about playing a friendly game of cards?”

One of the men, the Engineer in charge, replies, “We’ll have a bit of time while she builds up steam, so why not? What’s the stakes?”

Ralph answered back, “Well, we ain’t got any money if that’s what you mean, but we could spare a couple of bottles of this here fine expensive imported deluxe genuine wine beverage to provide us all with a bit of social lubrication.” He holds up a bottle for examination. It appears harmless enough.

Colin chirps up, “And we could also boil you up some chili. It’s world infamous.”

“You mean it’s famous”, asked one of the men?

“Well,” admitted brother Ralph, “you might say that too.”

“It sure got us out of India,” mumbled Colin.

“So it’s like international cuisine, is it?”

“Something like that.”

So the scene was set, cards dealt, bottles opened, chili heated and served.

Before the major stupefaction effect of the wine sets in and while the railroad men were still able to talk (the chili has a much later but more horrendous effect) they find out that the train has taken on not just water and coal but also a load of fruit, vegetables and baking supplies for the rail camp, which is about 20 miles down the line, all the goods packed in the caboose. And some paint as well, caboose colored paint.

The brothers regard the trainmen frozen in their seats around the card table. They step out of the shack and look at the train. Ralph grins and says to his brother, “Well, you want a train?”

“A whole train? You mean you think we should keep it?” And with not even a pause for guilt or remorse he says, “Great! Okay, so what do you want to do with it?”

Ralph said, “Okay, so let’s think about this. What is a train?”

“That is,” Colin said.

“No, besides that. What is it? What does it have?”

Colin scratched his head, “Well, it’s got a boiler and a bunch of pipes, and a place to put in stuff to burn.”

“And what does that sound like to you,” Ralph asked?

“Is this a trick question? Why a still of course.”

“Correctamundo. So that’s what it is, except it also moves, which is really kinda’ cool when you get down to thinking about it. So it’s really a rolling still, and, since we don’t hear any objection to us, ah, liberating it,” he glances at the figures around the table again, “it’s all ours. And,” Ralph added, “instead of just using the water for steam to move the train, we also use it to make the next batch of Campbell Brothers wine.”

“Hey Ralph, you’re a genus, and we end up with more booze only we end up with it not here. Great idea.” Colin, once again amazed at his brothers’ logic, took a long lingering look at the locomotive and said, almost reverently, “Cool, I always wanted to have a train so that I could blow my own whistle.”

His brother wisely kept silent on that one.

So the brothers set about cutting up the fruit and vegetables, and part of a plank thanks to Ralph, and added the ingredients, a bag of yeast, and a bottle of wine as starter to the boiler. Then they turned up the heat. They also took the time to repaint the logo on the boxcar to read Colin’N’Ralph Railway, thinking that would be enough to fool anyone into believing that the thing was theirs.

They also renumbered the locomotive and chose the number 42. Why? Well for some reason they thought that 42 sounded like the answer to something important and so went with it.

By that time they heard sounds of returning life emanating from the shack. “Time for a motivational speech I think,” said Ralph. He cracked his knuckles and then went rushing back into the shack, arms flailing. He shook the engineer and roused him from his stupor, yelling in his ear as he did, “Hey, wake up, you have to get this train moving, now, you’re way behind schedule.”

With Ralph and Colin’s assistance they manage to get the man aboard. The engineer has just enough brain cells working to get the train into forward gear before he passes out again and falls out of the cab.

“Hey,” exclaimed Colin, “he abandoned ship.”

“No problem,” said Ralph, “we got it moving now.” And indeed the train was starting to inch forward on the rails.

“Hey Ralph, I just had a thought. There’s no cow catcher on the front of the train. Is that okay?”

“That’s not a problem either”, he said, “I always wanted to catch a cow.”

Colin says, “Why’s that?”

“Because they’re not squirrels.”

“And why would you want to catch a cow instead of squirrels?”

“Because they’re bigger, easer to see, and they seldom climb trees.”

“Okay then, you’re it.” Ralph climbed out to the front of the engine with a grin on his face and prepared to catch a cow.

Things seem to go well for a while but all this time the train is slowly picking up speed down the long straight railway line. Eventually Ralph is pinned, spread eagled, to the front of the train. His eyes keep getting wider and wider as he sees what is rushing to meet him and he contemplates possible doom. He even has to drop the cow.

It doesn’t help that Colin has been constantly stoking the fire and it is much too hot, adding more and more heat to a mixture that was already too volatile. He looks up from adding some more to the firebox and sees the landscape flash by. ‘Wow,’ he thinks, ‘we’re really moving now’. He sticks his head out the window and looks for his brother Ralph. All he can see are a bunch of fingers frozen white in a death grip on part of the rail bars at the front.

“Ralph, are you okay,” he yells?

“Stop us,” he faintly hears. “Stop this damn thing”.

Colin tries everything he can think of to stop the train but he can’t. There were just too many levers and dials and other things and he couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out which one was the brake, although he did find the whistle and blew that a lot. It didn’t help.

He returned to the window and yelled at his brother, “Ralph, it’s not slowing down, what should I do?”

He hears back, “Pull the brake lever.”

He looks around the engine compartment quickly and then yells back, “But which one is the brake lever?”

Faintly he hears, “Pull them all.”

Colin starts pulling on all the levers. The mechanisms screech and protest before breaking off in his hands, all to no avail.

By now they were going so fast that the wheels had started to glow. They had gone through the spectrum from red to yellow to white and then the underside started to melt accompanied by a terrible whooshing noise. The plaintive sound of the whistle took on the tones of a banshee wail.

A small hunting party of Arapaho pause in their trek across the plain in order to stare at the strange smoking, screaming monster as it races across the landscape towards what they know is the rim of a canyon. They give it a name and call it ‘stupid mistake’.

The train, at an almost unbelievable speed, runs out of track. It also misses the curve of the roadbed, hits an upraised shelf of rock, and literally rockets off the side of the cliff and into the sky. The train is running, no flying now, so fast, so hot, that when it hits a mesa it burns a hole right through the centre leaving a hole – what is called today ‘The Smoking Arch’.

The locomotive continues upward in a huge arc before starting its descent. When it hits the ground it blows up and leaves a huge crater.

No sign of the brothers was ever found, but then again no sign of the brothers was ever found.

In later years people wondered how this particular arch and crater had been, well, created; whether it was a bizarre natural geologic formation, or if it was somehow caused by some meteorite collision. Some even suggested that it was a nuclear blast test site.

According to the stories and traditions of the native people of the area the answer to all those suppositions is ‘no, it was caused by two stupid white men’. The native people have even immortalized the scene in petroglyph. There is a drawing in the rock that looks like two figures running. It also looks like a huge orange blob chasing them.

The end – for now.

The 2011 Christmas Wines

Time certainly seems to be both passing incredibly fast and inching along at a snail’s pace. It was only a short time ago that my brother Ralph and I hadn’t yet agreed on stories for this year’s labels and wines (I have to admit that I have a couple of things that I kept ‘on the back burner’ but I wasn’t able to convince Ralph to go with any of them. That’s okay; they can sit and stew a bit longer.).

First of all I wanted to express my love and appreciation to Ralph for taking on his shoulders the task of actually making the wines themselves. I was only involved in the final production stage. He did all the rest. Thanks Ralph. And although we did sample the end product (quality control right?) we didn’t go overboard there either which, according to the stories that we make up, is very un-Campbell like behavior. But the wine got made, the makings got bottled, the bottles got corked, and labels were attached. Now the pictures and stories have to be put on the website.

The stories themselves, as I said, are fairly recent imaginings. One of them was the result of a day I spent over my brother’s place. We went for a hike on an old railway line that had been made into a trail. On the drive back we had to do a grocery stop in the town of Lindsay, Ontario and then head back to Ralph’s place. On the outskirts of the town are two trains parked in a, well, park. We stopped and took some pictures. The older train became the model and the inspiration for one of the Campbell Brothers’ adventures.

The second story I’m not even sure who came up with the idea in the first place. It was likely Ralph. It seemed straightforward enough at the time.

A couple of weeks later Ralph came to my place in Scarberia for a visit. We did the photography of ourselves for both the labels either in my basement apartment (which is a trick in itself) or on the back deck (you wouldn’t realize just how many of the labels have had photography done on that deck). We also threw a few ideas together for stories.

Over the next little while I put together some variations for the labels and had Ralph okay them, got them into production, and then went ahead and started working on the stories themselves. This also meant sending drafts of the stories to Ralph by email for his input and any changes he thought we should make. The train story, although still long, I managed to fit on a single sheet of paper in brochure format. The other story, sheesh, just kept growing and growing. To be honest I haven’t even finished it yet, so we had to come up with another plan for something to hand out with the wine.

We decided to do another brochure, but not print out the whole second story. As I said the story had gotten just too long by this time. We thought it would be fun to make a brochure that advertised the story and have it then point in the direction of the web site. If people were interested in reading the whole thing then they could go online, if not, the brochure itself would serve. One thing I’d like to say, when I looked at the stock template that we were going to use it immediately reminded me of a certain coffee chain that will not remain nameless. We had some fun throwing stuff on the brochure and then printed it out.

By doing the advertising handout I created another problem for myself because bottles of wine and accompanying brochures are already being, have been, given out, and with the blog address printed on them. There should be something online when and if they come looking, don’t you think? I told this to Ralph and then added that I thought I should put an ‘under construction’ sign on the site (as a placeholder really) until I got the story finished.

So that’s where we are now.

I’d like to thank the people who have gone along with this running Campbell gag (do you realize that we’ve been doing this for over 15 years now) and hope everyone who either pilots their way here or stumbles across this site enjoy the stories.

The Christmas Labels of 2009 - 'What Ring?' and 'Campbells in Blunderland'

An Introduction.

Another year and another season of cheer have gone by. Campbell Brothers' wines, a red and a white, have been procured, produced, and bottled (by Ralph's valiant efforts), and the resultant product distributed and gurgled. It has hopefully contributed to some of that seasonal cheer as well.

I would like to say a little bit regarding the stories, at least the parts that I write. I gear the stories to my bestest brother and friend, Ralph, and to my bestest friend Sid (who is like a brother to me, and who has made an appearance in the 'Ring' story too this year). They are the ones for whom the stories are actually written. I like to make them laugh.

There's actually quite a bit of stuff in this year's two stories that are elements particular to Ralph and I. Here's an example: In the earliest incarnation of the blog I think I mentioned something about sitting in a basement under a bare bulb and bottling the wine and laughing. That actually happened. The telling of it has resurfaced in one of the stories. And it's the same with other things from our individual or shared experiences, or from things that we've talked about, so you end up with references to things like clearing brush, septic tanks, arc welders, and chainsaws. Oh and there's wine, to be sure (or at least, sometimes, something else alcoholic, but usually wine), usually made by us, and usually patently potent. And chili too.

And I am sure there are many things mentioned that are shared with Sid, like his library in this instance.

The stories that were written to go along with this year's wine offerings were huge things, at least by our standards. Each story became something like 17 printed pages long, each. They were so long in fact that we felt that we couldn't afford to make print outs of them and hand them around with the wine, as we've done for so many years now. The stories just kept on growing longer and longer. If that's a fault then it is mine (mea culpa) but I swear that the characters involved in them just wouldn't shut up, they all demanded space. That's my excuse and I'm sticking by it.

So we had these long stories and puzzled a while on what to do with them, how to package them up for distribution. What we did, instead of printing them out, was to make 'pdf' files of the labels and the stories, and burn everything out to disc. Actually I put 'html' versions on the discs as well so that any computer's browser could access them. Then we put Campbell Brothers Winery stickers on the discs and handed them out. Finito. Right?

Unfortunately I found out recently that not all computers could read the discs I burned out even though I put the files in formats that should have been accessible by both machines. They were created and burned out on my iMac and it seems that some Window's machines just won't see the files. What a crock of, well, smelly stuff (don't get me started), but it became one of the reasons why I wanted to make the effort early in the new year to get the new stories onto the blog where, if you have the internet, you should be able to access them (didn't I just finish saying something similar about the files themselves?).

So I hope you enjoy the stories.

Oh, I almost forgot to add, as a bonus bonus on the discs I threw in the Sherlock Holmes story as well (which already appears earlier in this blog and is called 'The Case of the Speckled Tongue').

Wine Labels and Stories for Christmas 2008

Introduction:

Well, it's been a while but here we are back again with this years new crap, I mean crop, of labels and stories. I hope you enjoy them.

It's been a weird year for us, my brother Ralph and I. Many things have changed since the last posting, but some things are hard (if not down right impossible) to put down, like a flu epidemic or plague. The tradition of the Campbell Brothers' Christmas wine has become one of those things it seems, and so, without further ado or eggnog, it's on to the labels and stories themselves.

Engineer Behind Wine (2008)

Ralph wanted to do something a bit different for the storyline of one of the Christmas wines this year. He wanted to make what you might call a commemorative label and so dedicated the story to one of the people he had known while he worked for a sawmill in the north.  The story came out basically as you see it and as he related it to me. The image for the label itself was pulled from a couple of sources on the net and combined using my old friend Photoshop. Ralph also contributed a couple of his own shots from up north, of the logging truck and the snowshoes in the snow, which were also added. This is the label and the story of Engineer Behind (which was printed in a brochure format).

Here's the label:

 

The front cover of the brochure started with:

The Campbell Brothers Present...

Engineer Behind 

(again with the picture of the dozer stuck in the bog)

One of the many misadventures of Ralph Campbell, known then as Ralph of the bog.

On the inside of the brochure the story started:

This is a true story, the names have not been changed because nobody is innocent.

This is decanted to the memory of one Lucien Lemetang (and I hope I spelled his name right). He is remembered fondly, even after all these years. I hope his spirit rests in peace.

Lucien has the right to be called a character. The reason for this is because that’s what he was, a real character. He was a hard working, hard living, wiry man who worked up north in the bush for a sawmill company (like the one that had just hired me). Lucien had no family, at least that he knew of, and his way of life was to work incredibly hard in the bush, driving bulldozer, for maybe three months at a time, and then take the next three or four weeks off to get drunk and hang out, basically to live, in a brothel until all the money ran out and he had to go back to work. That was his life.

But Lucien was a good friend to me. He helped this young English Canadian come up from Southern Ontario, a guy still wet behind the ears, a collage kid just graduated from school. Well, Lucien was my teacher there, or one of them, and from him I learned about logging, and working with people.

Not long after I started with the lumber company the order came down from the owner to move the cutting crews to a new cutting area. We had two days, Lucien and I, to make a logging trail and a landing site (for the rough cut timbers to be collected).

Early one morning a flat bed truck dropped off the D-6 bulldozer at the beginning of the new cutting area and then left. Lucien and I, who had driven out in a pick-up truck to the site, got out and readied ourselves for work. I turned to Lucien and told him that I wasn’t too sure about how to go about this (rough dozing a trail). He turned to me and said in his heavy French accent, “Hokay den, I teach you to be engineer behind.”

And I said, “What?”

And he said, “Yeah, you stay dere behind the bulldozer with the photograph, map and compass (a compass, by the way, doesn’t work very well on or near a bulldozer because of all the metal) and tell me which way to go? Hokay?”

Truck on a logging road

So we started to make a trail through the bush, me walking behind the D-6 with my map and my compass trying to figure out where we were and what direction to go. Lucien was busy ahead of me building the trail (de-building the forest) and he would look back at me every once in a while to see which way he should go; right, left, or straight ahead.

For the first couple of hours things went great until I missed a turning point. Instead of making a turn we went straight…straight into a bog. I soon learned where the expression ‘to get bogged down’ came from. It happened so quickly it was unbelievable.  Black bog mud came up over the bulldozer’s tracks and the dozer sank up to its belly pan in the muck. Muck rhymes with stuck, and with another choice word that I’ll refrain from using here.

Lucien tried as hard as he could to get the bulldozer out but it kept sinking further and further into the bog. There was a look in his eye which seemed to say, ‘Look what dis #*&%@* stupid English person done to me and my baby’. He didn’t say much to me after that, only a couple of times, to direct me in what he wanted done.

In doing soil classifications you try to describe the type of soil you’re looking at. For example, in describing a bog the description might be a ‘peaty muck’ or a ‘mucky peat’, but this stuff was either a ‘crappy muck’ or a ‘mucky crap’, or what we call, in layman’s terms, ‘loon shit’, and that’s the way it smelled and the way it felt. It oozed in everywhere and into everything. It seeped into your clothes like India ink. And did I mention the smell?

The way we eventually got out, after about three hours of backbreaking and dirty work, was that we cut small trees and kept feeding them under the tracks of the D-6 and slowly walked it backwards out of the bog until we got to solid ground.

Once out, I climbed on top of the D-6 and we started to follow our trail out of the bush. It seemed like hours that I sat beside him and watched as he operated the controls. He never said a word, he just steamed. The look in his eye made my heart and soul sink further and further (like a dozer in a swamp). Even though I was a big lad I felt pretty small right then. We finally got back to the road, cleaned the mud off the tracks of the dozer before it froze there, and still not a word from Lucien.

We were sitting in the truck, just about to start back for home, when Lucien poured himself a cup of coffee from his thermos, took a sip, and pointed to the D-6 and said, “You know dat yellow ting over dere? It no submarine.”

And that’s the story of my first experience of being an engineer behind.

S

One night, a few years later, when it was -40 below (and it doesn’t matter whether you use Celsius or Fahrenheit, they’re both the same) and Lucien was quite drunk, he went outside of his little shack in the bush to take a piss. He passed out and, as they say, when he woke up he found himself frozen and quite much dead. It wouldn’t take long at that temperature. You could have used him as a plank on a logging bridge.

Sigh. He’ll be missed very much.

And that is why this wine is dedicated to Lucien. I hope that you will raise a glass in his honour.

And that's it. I really liked the story and even though it's a departure from what we usually do I think it works well.

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.