Looks like we may not quite set the record today…

No, dog shoots man.

“My world” is approaching its daily traffic record. With 2 hours and 25 minutes left until midnight Pacific time, the website has received 76 unique hits so far today — already making this the second-busiest day ever — and just 4 more hits would tie the record; 5 would break it. (The record, 80, was set on my parents’ 25th anniversary, May 28.) The extra traffic is largely due to people searching for the phrase “duck in a noose,” as well as a few searches for movies of the Rally Monkey and some direct hits from Blogger.com.

[Welcome, new visitors! For my posts about “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” please visit my homepage or take a look at this category. This post is about the death of actor Richard Harris nearly three years ago. -ed., 7/15/05]

Actor Richard Harris, who played Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the first two “Harry Potter” movies — and was scheduled to reprise the role in the next five sequels — has died, according to a CNN Breaking News bulletin I just received. I don’t know what he died of, but I remember being afraid that this would happen when I saw a TV biography that discussed Harris’s crazy lifestyle. What will Warner Brothers do???

UPDATE, 3:09 PM: Apparently Harris died of Hodgkin’s Disease. Maybe that was what I heard that made me worry he would die, rather than a crazy lifestyle. Or maybe it was both. Either way, I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “He might die in the next few years, and what will Harry Potter do then?” It would almost be easier to replace Harry Potter himself than Harris’s wonderful portrayal of Dumbledore.

This website may set a daily traffic record today thanks to a monkey, a duck, a noose, and a Moose.

As of 1:40 PM Friday, “My world” already had 58 hits today — more than double the average daily total of ~25, and only 24 short of the daily record of 80 set on May 28.

Of today’s 58 hits, 25 came from people using various search engines, mostly MSN, to search for the words “duck in a noose.” (For some reason, my website is #7 on the MSN search for that phrase.)

“Duck in a noose,” of course, is the enigmatic phrase that was uttered by Police Chief Moose on Wednesday night, repeating the words of the serial sniper who, thank God, was caught only a few hours later. (The New York Times this morning has an excellent explanation of the phrase.) My site gets “duck in a noose” hits because I mentioned it here and here.

Meanwhile, 4 more hits today have come from people searching for movies of the Rally Monkey — who, coincidentally, found himself tied up quite a few nooses this week in San Francisco.

Moose, noose, monkey, monkey…

UPDATE, 2:02 PM: When I put this post online, I immediately got 4 more hits from people on the Blogger homepage, who clicked on my site on the “10 Most Recently Updated Blogs” list. There are probably more people perusing the Blogger homepage than usual today, because Blogger was hacked earlier today, and the servers were down for a while. So now, I can attribute my increase traffic to a monkey, a duck, a noose, and Moose, and a hacker. :)

Paul Wellstone, one of the most principled liberals in the U.S. Senate, has died in a plane crash. His chartered plane went down in Evelethm, Minnesota, killing the senator, his wife, his daughter, three campaign staffers and two pilots. Wellstone was 58.

Aside from the awful human tragedy, this is a political nightmare, happening less than two weeks before an election. It’s like Mel Carnahan all over again. Wellstone was locked in a tough re-election battle against former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman in a crucial race for control of the Senate. Larry Sabato recently labeled Wellstone “one of the most endangered Democratic incumbents in the country.” What will happen next is uncertain. CNN isn’t saying anything yet about whether/how he can be replaced on the ballot; the breaking news is too recent.