Part I. Philosophy
Does a website need to have a philosophy? Probably not, but we find ourselves answering enough
strange email that we thought it might clarify the views presented on these page. It probably
won't, but who knows, maybe we'll start a trend.
mrfs.net Philosophy: The world is not nearly as peaceful and friendly a
place as most people would like it to be.
There are two basic ways to react once you've accepted this philosophy. There is
the sort of mainstream morality version, which we call Lemma #1.
mrfs.net Lemma #1: The general happiness and level of civilization in the
world is not only constantly increasing, but with hard work, charity, and excitingly chunky
social programs, we can all one day be one big happy planet (with no diversity at all)!
This appears to be a central tenet of the current US government in fact. Although they might add
"preventative military action" to the list. This requires lots of effort in things like politics,
religion, economics, and the talk-show circuit. We truly believe that there are people who truly
believe in Lemma #1, but we've chosen to go with the much more laissez-faire path known also as
Lemma #3
mrfs.net Lemma #3: We might as well let other people who are interested
in those things deal with them and in the meantime just concentrate on enjoying ourselves.
Of course, Lemma #1 was disproven in the seminal work "This is all completely and utterly wrong"
which was unfortunately destroyed in a tragic water-skiing accident. Unable to reproduce it,
we've settled for being strongly in favor of Lemma #3 until such time as someone conclusively
proves that the whole mess of humanity is in fact hopeless. Incidentally, Lemma #2 has not yet
been discovered but it is generally believed to have little to do with the other Lemmas, and much more
to do with the recipe for the world's greatest key lime pie.
A recent email has described this attitude as selfish, hedonistic and unproductive. So we counter
with this corollary:
mrfs.net Corollary #1 to Lemma #3: Given the fact that there are other Lemma #3
people out there, as well as Lemma #1 people on a break we can actually provide a potentially useful
service here.
What is that, you might ask. Well we aren't sure yet but we do periodically get positive email so it
must be something.
We also have a postulate simply because we thought what with the lemmas, and corollaries, we deserved to
have a postulate to bandy about as well.
MRF Postulate: Let A = a pizza and let B = mushrooms. Let C = the union of A and B and
let D = any other A such that there is no B. Given all that, then we would much prefer D.
Part II. History
Alpha-testing
So given that philosophy we naturally set out to create entertaining but pointless websites.
In the early days (circa 1994) we were without focus. Melanie created websites focused on otters,
the color green, and various forms of severe weather. David concentrated on hunting down pictures
of the skyline of every major city in the world.
Beta-testing: Mrf 1.0
A few years later the term 'mrf' came into existence under bizarre environmental conditions that
have proven impossible to recreate in a laboratory setting. Unfortunately we did not yet grasp the
full import of what it meant so we just inventoried it away. During this period we consolidated
our webpage efforts under the 'trivial pursuit' theme though there wasn't much of interest originally.
Mrf 2.0
Ultimately we realized that two things were starting to build up on the web page: Pictures from our
travels, and pictures of roller-coasters. Alas, we are unable to build roller-coasters (which is
a good thing if you ever seen Melanie play Roller Coaster Tycoon) and thus we decided to concentrate
on pictures of our travels. The 'trip' pages became the central aspect of our website, along with related
silly pages mostly focusing on Trout and people who are unqualified to be in a canoe. During our travels we
had also started to collect pictures of the strange 'mrf' phenomena but we were not yet prepared to share them
with the world.
Mrfs 3.0 : Mrfs.net
All of this led to what lies before you today. An entire website dedicated to our attempt to share the more whimsical,
precarious side of things that most people seem to miss entirely. Not just the profitable and glorious study of mrfs,
but also subjects like corn skunks, boojums and of course Trout. In recent years we've come to the conclusion that people
like Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and Samuel Coleridge were actually just a little more attuned to this side of the world and not
nonsense poets at all. (fyi: James Joyce was not attuned to anything extraordinary at all, he was just crazed.)
So in this spirit you may find on this website things which seem unreal, but probably only because you haven't looked hard enough.
Or because you went to Amherst [that's an obligatory Amherst joke given the inherent Williams-affiliation of mrfs.net. The Northwestern half of the affiliation is somewhat saddened because they don't have a single notable rival to make fun of].
Part III. Dogma
It has recently come to our attention that as a start-up philosophy we are required to have some central tenets. So here goes:
- You should always try to be nice on Tuesdays.
- Don't spill your drink, especially if it's good rum.
- Don't ever take your seminal philosophical work water-skiing with you.
- There are very few dishes that can't be improved with a good balsamic vinegar.
- When skiing, avoid trees.
- You're never too old for Nerfs, Legos or Crayons.
- If they put the road on the map, it must be driveable.
- You can never spend too much time barefoot.
- Going below your dewpoint can result in excess moisture.
- "Because it's there" is a perfectly good reason.
