os.getcwd, for example, doesn't return the directory my script is in, but instead returns the directory that the... uh... "compiled" script is running in, which is much closer to the interpreter's location. Doesn't have anything to do with my website dir structure, IOW. Several sites have commented that this is by design: that the "designers of Python" are helping me not shoot myself in the foot.

But the whole point of my app is to be able to drop an image in a folder and have it show up on the web page without modifying any source code.