I went to hear Ray Bradbury speak once. The title of the talk was, or should have been, "Be True to Your Dinosaurs."

In it, he described the inspiration of his one of his early stories: the demolition of the big wooden roller coaster at Venice Pier in LA. The disassembled framework, lying in the sand, evoked for Ray the skeletal remains of a dinosaur washed up from the sea. The story inspired by that image, "The Fog Horn" (published in The Golden Apples of the Sun, brought Bradbury to the attention of John Huston, who on that basis engaged him to write the screenplay for Moby Dick.

But I digress.

The reason he told that story is that, as a child, he'd LOVED dinosaurs. He'd been a true dino geek, and had trouble making friends because of that obsession. But there was another young man -- also named Ray -- living nearby who also loved dinos. The two Rays got together and decided that their affection for extinct reptilian life forms was more important to them than having lots of friends. Instead, they vowed to be true to their dinosaurs, and they were: Bradbury with "The Fog Horn" and countless other stories, and the other Ray -- Harryhausen -- with his first stop-action animation project, "Evolution," which got him his first professional work.

I stay true to my dinosaurs by, among other things, spending time on Mudcat with all you other obsessives. Thanks for the advice, Ray.