Is it possible to intercept external garbage URLs to a search routine instead of 404 page?

[eluser]John_Betong_002[/eluser]
Nearly there but cannot get both conditions to work together.

What I would like to do is to somehow trap the external URL before it fails the routing tests, etc.

The following .htaccess in the images folder is supposed to:
1. accept image links from my own site
2. intercept all external links and divert to an ./images/index.php
(where URL is parsed and routed to a search routine).

.htacees

Code:

RewriteEngine on

  # this line redirects everything to index.php including links from my own site
  # RewriteRule (.*) index.php

  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?johns-jokes.com [NC]

  # RewriteRule \.$ ./index.php
  # RewriteRule (.*) index.php/$1 [R,NC,L]

 
./images/index.php

Code:

<?php
  // this works fine
  // 1. parses the URI
  // 2. formats the results
  // 3. redirects the results to my search routine with parameters

  $x = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
  if(strpos($x, '.'))
  {
    // bad link used for testing
    // $x = http://johns-jokes.com//afiles/images/days-before-christmas.png" width="39" alt="image"/>

    $x=substr($x,15);
    $i2=strpos($x, '.');
    $x=substr($x, 0, $i2);

    $x=str_replace('-','/', $x);
    header ('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
    header('Location: http://johns-jokes.com/joke/search/' .$x, TRUE, 301);
    exit;
  }