Simple redirect complicated by rules below it - regex

Question

I want a simple redirect in my .htaccess, with the goal of making a "shortlink" to a long URL.
mydomain.com/short
to take the user to
http://www.mydomain.com/blahblah/foo/bar/foobar/uglylongurl.html
So I tried this:
Redirect /short http://www.mydomain.com/blahblah/foo/bar/foobar/uglylongurl.html
but within the same .htaccess file is:
# Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
This is causing my simple redirect to have "short" appended as a query string.
I have tried [R] to redirect immediately and I've also tried [L] to stop processing if the first (simplest) rule is used. Both give me a 500 error.
I hope someone knows what I'm missing here. I am on a tight deadline and this is just killing me :P Thanks in advance for any help.
Many thanks to the responder who got this working. I had the redirect above the other rules, however, I needed to change it to a RewriteRule and add the additional code as in his example.
One more issue arose after this....and with his suggestion, I am adding the next layer of the problem to this question (instead of to the comment reply, where the code tags didn't work and it was hard to read).
So here is my next issue. The first one in the list works just fine, whether redirecting to an internal page or an external URL. But subsequent rules give me a 404 error. Here is what it looks like (and note they are all before the one that appends the query string):
RewriteRule ^short/?$ /ugly/long/url.html [L,NC]
RewriteRule ^/sweet/?$ /another/ugly/long/url.html [L,NC]
RewriteRule ^/offsite/?$ http://www.somewhereelse.com/with/a/long/url.html [L,NC]
# Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

Answer 1

Order of rewrite rules in pretty important. First have your desired rule then rest of the rules.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^short/?$ /blahblah/foo/bar/foobar/uglylongurl.html [L,NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]