From the foreign word carne meaning meat, a hastily erected collection of scary rides, tents, trailers with lurid phantasms painted on the side, cotton candy, ferris wheels, dizzying crowds, sawdust in the mud, neon stripes, styrofoam-hatted barkers, kewpie dolls, balloons, hyenas and bratwursts and puke and death and the best place in the world to feel cheesy and low and full of life.