Anyway, I stumbled across the Toy Ray Gun website, and was immediately thunderstruck by the seemingly endless variety and colorful designs of these toy space guns. I eventually struck up an online friendship with Gene Metcalf, and began collecting. At the time, he had a section on the site called "ray gun talk", much like what we now call Alphadrome. After researching the many photos of guns produced over the years, I decided that I would photoshop my own concept of the perfect ray gun. So, I cobbled together the picture you now know as my avatar...the Neutron Ray. 
Over the years, I had forgotten about the post I had made then. Several months ago, I was scouring the ether, searching for photos of ray guns
, and I spotted one that looked very familiar...too familiar 
, it was my fantasy space pistol, and it was being used by a blog site called "The Freeman". The image was being used to illustrate a proposed crowd control weapon "The Pain Ray"...not very complimentary, I must say 
.
As time went on, I was again on eBay, searching for guns, and came across a piece of art made by a fellow named Verbek, who created works from glass powders and beads, which when heated under high temperatures would fuse into a "glass painting". The topic of this Sci-Fi masterpiece again looked familiar...yup, my gun
. I bid on the piece and won it, but when I mentioned that he had perhaps borrowed this from my original concept, he denied it. Dunno, it looks a bit too close to be coincidence. 
Three days ago, I was looking for something to use as wallpaper for my desktop, and came across this great painting done by an artist named Adam Simpson. The work "Ray Guns-2009" shows several examples of well-known toy guns realized in various colors, a really cool illustration.
However, upon examining the work closer, I noticed one gun, that was never put into production...I'm sure you already guessed which one.
After retrieving the wallpaper, I was just about to log off, when I spied another familiar form, a watercolor sketch by an artist named Jez Whitworth . Hmmm...?
yup, so, I guess I should feel honored that all these folks liked my gun well enough to use it as their muse, as for me, well I'm just a-mused.
