It's been the custom here to note the passing of each 10,000 visits to this site. Lately it's been taking about three months to reach a new 10,000 milestone.

Until yesterday, that is, when a favorable link by the mighty Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit led to another such link on National Review Online's "Corner" blog. Prof. Reynolds apparently found out about the linked blog entry in question when I e-mailed him about it early yesterday morning. The deluge of hits that resulted from the two links to it (more than 23,000 for the day) cracked the 40,000 and 50,000-visit marks on the same day, with the 60,000 mark likely to be passed very early this morning.

What were they all looking for? This.

Given the smash-hit nature of that Photoshop job, here's a peek behind the scenes. I made up three shots to pick from. One of the other two was:

The other one was totally X-rated; I'm not going to put that one on the internet for fear of prosecution, but the source photo was this:

Make up your own porn.

I also started pasting this guy in over Saddam's left shoulder, but his straggly hair made it too tedious:

Moral of the story: You want hits? Catch the eye of Glenn Reynolds, even for a moment. Thanks to him. Welcome to all the new visitors.