<meta name="LineWrap" content="true"><TITLE>SR_Bk1 0101</TITLE><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0102.txt">Next (Page 102)</A><BR> "My Moisture Detection Friend loves that feeling. He tries to cultivate that feeling, but it's not so easy all the time. The past is so alluring because it's out of reach. Just like that toy you had as a kid, that you search garage sales for. That toy is an object of worship! But once you get it, it's just not the same. You see what I mean?"<P><P>"Yeah," Pacer said. "But still, if I could time travel to a Toys'R'Us in 1975 or something, I think I'd have a wicked time. A totally wild, insane, wicked fuckin' time."<P><P>* * *<P><P>"Can you believe it?" Carne said. "We're finally down South, on this back porch right next to a swamp, banjo music playing, all that good stuff. And it's hot, really hot! My Moisture Detection Friend would be so jealous. He loves cliches."<P><P>"Yeah, man," Pacer said. "So when are we going to the mall? I gotta get a new pair of Oakley sunglasses, and I wanna see if they have that new videogame at the arcade."<P><P>"I am not at all distressed by your statement. Though we are in a semi-legit location, I think that these themes and cliches go hand in hand with the milieu of the mall. In fact, we should come up with a new kind of place at a mall, with these kind of themed locations and the like."<P><P>"They already have it to some degree. Rainforest Cafe, for example. And a lot of stores are theming themselves more and more these days. They got all this competition from the online stores--they gotta come up with ways to lure people in."<P><P>"I know what you mean, but... but I can't help but think that people would pay to be in a pure location like this--no shopping, no restauants, no drinks--just unadulterated location."<P><P>"Well, Disney-style dark rides have been doing that for decades, haven't they?"<P><P>"They have, but it's all a bit tainted with stories and characters and most of all the darn time limit. If I could, I'd like to spend hours and hours in the Pirates of the Caribbean universe! You know?"<P><P>"Well, in California they do have that restaurant that's kinda in the Pirates world... but I guess you're talking about more like just being there..."<P><P>"Yes! I'd like to pay a small fee, and just be there. No time limit, no structure, no sequence--just the being. Kind of like that dark ride building kind of idea... where you just wander and be in cool themed places. That is what I'm talking about."<P><P>"Shit! Another friggin' mosquito bite! This reality shit is bullshit. Give me a fake version any day--without bugs and heat and shit!"<P><P>"I quite agree," Carne said. "Just like looking at a painting of a thing is a far different, and perhaps better, experience than looking at the real thing, so too with this whole idea of themed locations. And maybe we're just the ones to make an idea like the one I've been describing a reality. 'Carne & Pacer's Themed Something or Other'. That's a goal, my friend--something we've been sorely lacking! Y'know?"<P><P>* * *<P><P>"My Moisture Detection Friend is trying to create online entertainment," Carne said, "but web surfers' attention spans are very short, and those folks are very fickle. Faced with information overloads, minds frazzle and pop, and your website could easily be blown out in one of those pops, in each person's mind."<P><P>"Yeah," Pacer said. "A lot of stuff on the web sucks. And even the stuff that's good sucks at some level. And usually on many levels. The traditional network and publishing idea, with very strict editors and decisionmakers filtering content... that was a good idea."<P><P>"I agree. When there were only three or four TV channels, folks could talk about the shows the next day at work. But with hundreds of millions of websites, usually no two people have seen the same thing. But then there's the promise of bringing together exactly those people who went to that website, online, via chat and message boards and email and the like."<P><P>"That's the problem.<BR><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0102.txt">Next (Page 102)</A>