4U2P

This story idea came from my brother Ralph. It revisits an older theme from a past year's wine label concerning the brothers and how they got off earth in an old green pickup truck, captured by the Borg, and how they were assimilated and then de-assimilated (if that's the correct term, another term might be dumped) by the collective after running amok. The new story concerns what happened next, along with the creation of dark matter. It was produced as a brochure to accompany this years 2007 Christmas wine (for the white wine) and simply called:

4U2P



A question of dark matter

A Campbell Brothers Spaced Adventure




In the beginning…

The last time we left the Campbell Brothers, Ralph and Colin, in space we hoped they’d have the decency to stay there, for eternity maybe. Or fall into the Sun or something, but no, they have to get themselves captured by the Borg (a story from a couple of years ago).

In the end though it worked out in typical Campbell fashion with Ralph and Colin (now known as Smorgas the Borg and Ernest Borg Nine) creating so much trouble for the Borg that they were soon ejected from the Collective, along with their furry henchmen, or henchrodents, the five Miceborg, as well as what remained of the 1972 Sierra Grande pickup truck that got them off the planet Earth and into this story to begin with, known as the Green Hornet. And, AND, just before they were all spaced out (so to speak) the Torso of the Borg Queen, not wanting to be separated from Colin, stowed aboard as well. The last we heard they were all left circling Uranus.

See how much fun you missed.

It took Smorgas and Ernest a little while to de-assimilate themselves (mostly through consuming large amounts of space hooch they’d concocted) and get back to their old selves (whatever that meant) but, yes Colin and Ralph where back and ready for action. They weren’t too bad off as well, all things considered, because they had managed, again with the aid of their furry bandits, to abscond with quite a bit of stuff from the Borg Mothership. They started out by having a ‘Supplies Party’ for themselves. It involved drinking. Torso Girl danced.

Now, you heard of impulse power and warp speed and all that kind of stuff from television shows and the movies. Well it’s basically rocket science so it ain’t easy to do. The Campbells had accidentally invented something similar which they showed off in the last space adventure. It was called the Drunk Drive. It allowed them to travel just under the speed of light. Now they had the technology and an idea on how to go even faster than that.

After reconfiguring all the equipment stolen from you know whom they decided that now was the time to test it out. First they got drunk, really drunk, and then kicked in the Drunk Drive and streaked away. Then they got drunker.

Finally, when Ralph was looking quite green, Colin gave him a single shot of pure alcohol. It did the trick. Ralph started to heave and ran for the toilet. This was the moment. Colin threw a switch and as the ship nudged light speed the mass of the ship expanded to infinity. Ralph’s efforts to reach the toilet stretched the moments to an eternity and, in his desperate and futile attempt to reach the toilet (which kept expanding just out of reach) caused the ship to break the light speed barrier. Then Ralph seemed to explode in a great technocolour yawn.

That was it. They had invented the Barf Drive. Off they went into deep space, roaming the universe like two lost pickpockets in a nudist colony (with nothing to do but having lots to look at) taking turns initiating the Barf Drive. The only drag was that the clean up afterward was horrendous.

Eventually they came across a small planetoid. In “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” it states that the planetoid is of little importance and is only used as a rest stop along an intergalactic hyperspace flyway. It is known by the designation 4U2P.

The only building on the planetoid was a pub. The rest of the planetoid was used for parking. The name of the pub was the Star of Death Pub and Haberdashery.

It made the cantina from Star Wars look like a nursery school.

Old space helmets, nominally for sale, sat on a high ledge surrounding the dingy room, all old, in various extraterrestrial configurations, all useless. Particle and projection weapons were all kept in a rack near the airlock.

The denizens mostly sat and stood around drinking, fighting and then falling down and avoiding.

To the Campbell’s it was like shitkicker’s heaven.

The place also had entertainment. On certain rotations it offered a vaudeville night and it so happened that they were looking for new acts.

When the brothers found this out, ever open to a new venture, they decided that they might just fit the bill and maybe they even could be on it. They pitched themselves, the Mice and the Queen Torso to the owner of the pub, a squiddish looking old fem named Xylotti, as ‘The Famous 2+5+1/2 Musical Band, Tap Dancers, Brewers, Decanters and Chief Bottle Washers’ while Xylotti was multi-appendagely mixing and serving drinks to the thirsty clientele.

Thanks to Ralph’s big mouth the Campbells also promised not only to play great music but also to make the hostess a huge batch of the galaxy’s first alcoholic chili.

As Ralph’s voice droned on and on and on Xylotti’s eyes seemed to glaze over. She seemed to become hypnotized by it’s monotony and ended up nodding and agreeing to hire them.

So the Mice quickly grabbed up their teeny tiny little homemade brass instruments and started to practice. Ralph and Colin however had to scramble to find something to play. Ralph found an old antimatter warp coil to bang on. All Colin could find was a old G-string from Torso Girl’s wardrobe. That would do.

And then they started in making the chili in a huge wheeled vat and threw in it everything that they could find, chunks and fluids alike. I won’t mention where the contents of the Barf Drive cleanup bucket ended up.

So it was now cabaret night and the place was packed. Storm Troopers where sitting in a corner admiring their new red and blue uniforms, the wookies were looking stunning with their golden blond fur. The ewoks just hung around looking cute.

There was a Luke and Lila Skylark lurking around, two hustlers trying to scam drinks and money for a new hairpiece for Lila.

The warm up act was a dreadful comedian called Han who was doing his solo.

Two robots where arguing by the washroom “I am not a 3P”,”R2.”

The 2+5+1/2 were put on stage before the magical act of Dark Raider and his Knobby Assistant Darth Mel. Their act consisted of making planets disappear and taking over the Universe (and boy where those two ever pissed off when the Campbells got first billing).

On the stage the Mice where sending out a cool jazz beat. Ralph was banging away on his antimatter warp coil enthusiastically but to no particular beat. Colin was in his own world twanging away on the G-string. At the back of the stage was the huge vat of chilihol with tubes going every which way, boiling, bubbling, shaking, and waiting.

The Disaster (meaning bad star)

Now the brothers had intended their act to consist of singing old earth rugby songs like “Caviar Comes From The Virgin Sturgeon” and “She was only A Farmer’s Daughter But All The HorseMenKnewHer.” Torso Girl (who had by now already gotten quite a few propositions from the clientele) would dance.

But just before they started in singing Ralph got on the mike and asked for the indulgence of the audience. He turned to Colin and said “Pull my finger”. Colin looked perplexed for a second and then there came a glint to his eye. He looked at his brother and said “You pull mine and I’ll pull your’s”.

WELL there you have it. For the first time in history the Campbells did a DWFPT, a Double Whammy Finger Pull Toot. Not only a DWFPT but an amplified DWFPT, over the public address system. The brothers looked at each other with relief and smiles as the sound reverberations and then the smell hit the room.

‘The Sound’ caused the vat to crack. The chilihol started to foam, bubble over and turn black. Not only did it turn black but it turned Dark when it met ‘The Smell’. It kept foaming, growing and just wouldn’t stop. It flowed from the cracked vat like filthy lava and spread through the pub, took all the pretty new paint off the storm trooper uniforms and left them a dirty white colour It turned the wookies fur into a dirty brown. It also stained their chromosomes.

The Dark Matter broke out of the pub and soon started to cover the planetoid and spew into space.

The Mice had seen, heard and smelled it coming and hitched a ride on a lifeform that resembled a sprig of parsley (but boy could it move). They all headed for the truck and started the motor. Then Torso Girl piled in. The brothers weren’t far behind and dove into the truck and battened down the hatches. They simultaneously stuck their fingers down their throats, did you know what, engaged the barf drive and headed out into space.

Dark Matter comprises 22% of the universe and scientists today don”t know what its made up of. Or they’re just not saying.

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.