One day after receiving its 5,000th hit, “My world” experienced its second-busiest day ever with 78 unique hits on Friday — 55 of them occurring between 5:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Pacific time, and 28 of them coming from web surfers using search engines to look up the phrase “a duck in a noose.”

But the site, which at midday was on pace for between 120 and 130 hits by the end of the day, wound up falling just short of the all-time daily hits record of 80 when traffic dropped off sharply after 2:00 p.m. Pacific time. It is unclear why this occurred; more than half of the website’s daily traffic usually occurs after 2:00. Yet on Friday, there were only 17 hits — and only three “duck in a noose” hits — during the day’s final 10 hours.

One possible explanation is that as the sniper case was overshadowed by the day’s breaking news events, especially the death of Senator Paul Wellstone, the number of Internet searches for “a duck in a noose” diminished overall, returning the site to a traffic pattern more reminiscent of a typical day. The average daily traffic to “My world” is roughly 25 hits, roughly 13 or 14 of which typically happen after 2:00 p.m.

It is also unclear whether another flurry of “duck”-related hits might occur tomorrow or in the coming days. The possibility can’t be ruled out, since “My world” is still very highly rated in various search engine queries for the sniper’s mysterious words. Search-engine databases are always changing, but as of now, the phrase “duck in a noose” (surrounded by quotation marks) causes this website to come up third in an MSN search, while the words duck in a noose without quotes bring “My world” up eighth.

At any rate, May 28, 2002, my parents’ 25th anniversary, remains the #1 busiest day of all-time with 80 hits. Friday takes over second place from the website’s 74-hit launch day, Nov. 30, 2001, which now falls to third. Dropping to fourth and fifth place, respectively, are the 68 hits on Sept. 10, 2002 and the 65 on Sept. 11, 2002.

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.

Angels lose 16-4, trail the Giants 3-2 in the Series. Now they just gotta replicate the Diamondbacks’ feat from last year, and win the last two games at home. Oh, Rally Monkey! We need your services!

Meanwhile, Iraq has ordered all journalists out of the country because it says CNN is a mouthpiece for American propaganda. Ha! Yeah, right! Next you’ll be telling me the New York Times has a liberal bias! The nerve of these people… :)

Giants 6, Angels 0, 4th inning.

Here’s a really funny article about the Rally Monkey’s contract negotiations.

Meanwhile, it looks like the Angels are going to need him tonight. 2-0 Giants in the first inning, bases loaded.

From InstaPundit…

7:01 AM: The TV people are still playing this as “a new kind of serial killer,” but it’s not. It’s terrorism. It may be terrorism of the “leaderless resistance” variety — or not — but unless this is a huge screwup by the authorities it’s pretty obviously Islamic terrorism, and neither the authorities nor the media commentators are enhancing their credibility by pretending otherwise.

4:32 PM: The battle is on…the media want to portray the arrested sniper, John Allen Muhammed, as an ex-military man, a Gulf War veteran, an “expert” rifleman as qualified by the Army, whose grip on sanity was lost the longer he was in the miltary, as a man that couldn’t cope with assimiliation into civilian life. Another incarnation of Timothy McVeigh. The true story, which won’t be portrayed by CNN or NBC, is that he likely is a deranged militant Muslim fundamentalist who wanted to inflict terror on an lnnocent and unsuspecting population just like his adopted Al-Qaeda brothers in spirit.

My dad has the right idea, too: “They were independent self-starting ‘loner’ al Qaeda sympathizers, albeit unaffiliated… They were inspired, though not assigned, by yer man (Osama).”

Meanwhile, a site called QuasiPundit has a good explanation of the weird duck-in-noose thing, and an excellent post about how school authorities let this terrorist win.

Finally, ScrappleFace has a funny article about how we’re all totally safe now. And here’s another funny one, from yesterday, about how journalists think we’re not sufficiently afraid.

You can be sure this guy’s name will be coming up in President Bush’s speeches soon, right alongside Todd Beamer, another symbol of the new “Let’s Roll” America.

The Seattle Times reports:

Several federal sources said Muhammad and Malvo may have been motivated by anti-American sentiments in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Both were known to speak sympathetically about the men who attacked the United States, the sources said.

But neither man was believed to be associated with the al-Qaida terrorist network, sources said.

It’s like the July 4 LAX shooting all over again. Let the debate begin: Is this terrorism or not?

If the above facts are true, I say it is. The LAX ambiguity, to me, centered on whether the gunman was targeting Jews or the state of Israel. The former is a hate crime; the latter is terrorism. But if these guys were targeting Americans because they hate America (not, say, Christians because they hate Christians, or white people because they hate white people, etc.), then it’s not a hate crime, but terrorism.

Moment ago, this website received its 5,000th unique hit — from someone searching in vain for a movie of the Rally Monkey.

The historic hit was logged at 1:11 PM Pacific time Thursday. “My world” has been using its current hit counter since Feb. 23, 2002, almost exactly eight months ago.

The website’s 5,000th visitor, on the IP address host226.jennycraig.com, found “My world” through a Yahoo search for angels rally monkey mpeg. He or she visited my homepage, then went to the “My Videos” page, apparently hoping to find an MPEG of the famous Angels mascot. (There is no such video on my site.) The visitor then returned to my homepage, and after that apparently left my website.

He or she apparently ignored a plea that was posted on all pages of my website (now removed) asking Visitor #5,000 to e-mail me and tell me who he or she is. Click here to view that message as it appeared then.

This was fully the 16th hit I’ve gotten from someone searching for the Rally Monkey. Click here for more on that strange phenomenon.

The Washington Post reports that police sources say they think they’ve caught the snipers. Hooray! Now let’s just hope they were acting alone. For the very latest, check out the Post’s complete coverage.

Meanwhile, as someone who was flipping frantically back and forth between the World Series and CNN last night, I can definitely understand this article.