@ Josh, Dave - thanks for pointing out that I had missed the 2nd function. Dave, thanks also for pointing out the disabling of the status bar stuff. I hadn't paid attention to that before. Kinda makes what I was trying to do pointless, which is always good to know before one spends hours and hours trying something. ;-)
@ Alexx - that is an excellent suggestion, but not quite applicable to what I was attempting to accomplish in this particular example. I'm not actually tracking the clicks locally, but was making a stab at masking (from the casual user) the fact that they're affiliate links. But were I actually tracking them, I'd definitely use your strategy. Thanks to all. The jQuery list rocks! :-)