On the seminal 1978 live album, You Had to Be There, Jimmy Buffett introduces one of his songs by saying (and this is a paraphrase cause my turntable is in a garage in Guelph and Chapman took all my good vinyl),
"People ask me, how can you write those sensitive songs and then that trash, and I say, sometimes I feel real sensitive and sometimes I feel real trashy."
That’s how I approach barfblog. Sometimes I’ve got information that I just have to get out there that’s snarky, insightful and relevant, and sometimes I just feel real trashy.
In the first year of barfblog.com, we posted 825 entries, increased the number of unique monthly visitors from 1,000 to 40,000 per month, got picked up by the N.Y. Times, David Letterman and dozens of other new and traditional media outlets, and sold a few hundred T-shirts (it’s better than door-to-door chocolate sales to fund students).
We influenced the formation of public policy in many ways but our favorite was getting mentioned in the Wales E. coli inquiry, where I used the Bill Murray Groundhog Day analogy. And I got to meet Bill Murray in Manhattan and give him a poop shirt. Showing that microwaves may be a lousy way to cook pot pies was kinda fun. Safest food in the world? Shurley you must be joking.
The Internet means, unlike Jimmy in 1978, you don’t have to be here … in Manhattan (Kansas). But you can subscribe. http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/subscribe.html
What’s next? You’ll find out soon enough.
