Alex has now officially kicked my little blog’s ass on Technorati, the leading search and (more importantly) ranking engine for blogs.

As she gloats so unseemingly, her ranking has finally increased from being the 72,991st most-linked-to blog to being the 44,347th, leapfrogging this site which remains mired in 60,529th place.

Just how they come up with those numbers is something of a dark art, but it’s hard to argue with a gap that large. While high school popularity was always intangible, here I’m facing the stark judgement of pure mathematics — and I’m on the losing end.

The balance of power in our marriage has shifted; I felt a great disturbance in the blogiverse, as if thousands of voices cried out, “Hey, let’s hang out at this other blog instead.”

It would be churlish of me to suggest that this has anything to do with her earlier post practically begging the Technorati people to raise her ranking. And as much as it hurts to say so, it would probably be inaccurate as well.

The real reasons are probably twofold: one, Alex recently moved her blog into her root directory, and there are a lot of blogs that link to it, thereby adding to her score.

And two, the real reason: she keeps putting up fantabulous posts like 10 steps to RSStocracy, a simple guide to using news feeds and news aggregators to make yourself — in her words — better, smarter and more attractive to the same or opposite sex.

I mean, how can my commentary on politics, pop culture and PR possibly compete with this?

within about 24 to 48 hours of setting up your Bloglines account and subscribing to some news feeds, you’ll find that you’re reading more news in less time. In other words you will be better informed, smarter about the world around you, and less likely to embarrass yourself at cocktail parties by being out-of-the-loop on the latest book/meme/Hollywood gossip.

In fact, you’re going to be so much more efficient in your media tracking that you’ll have at least an extra ten minutes a day to do sit-ups, touch up your manicure, cultivate inner peace or whatever it is that you think will make you more attractive to the same or opposite sex.

Her posts will get you laid, for crying out loud. Not even iPods can do that.

Be that as it may, we stumble on here at ODTAA, resigned to our status as just one more wagging muscle in the Long Tail, getting occasional spousal reports on what the weather’s like near the Floppy Ears or — if she really, really takes off — the Short Stubby Nose. Reflected glory is still glory, after all…

…especially if reflected glory links to your blog and, yes, drives up your Technorati ranking.

Updated: This is just rubbing it in.