Now what tags are separate from the entity they're applied to and have their own table structure, what should the following query become:

$imageWhere = " AND " . prefix('images') . ".show=1 AND " .prefix('images').".tags NOT LIKE \"%no.random%\"";

Would you mind to tell us where you find that query or shall we search ourselves?..:-)

Well, I had modified a Random Image piece of code so that it wouldn't display photos (and albums) that are tagged with no.random. That's so I could avoid displaying any of 500 pictures I took at the baseball game. I tag albums or photos that I don't want to be selected randomly with "no.random". I guess the query has to join that other table now, sql wizardry.