thats a word press kind of setup,

you can also use this kind of thing.

ErrorDocument 404 /
Options -Indexes
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /tmp/blah
RewriteRule ^$ index.php/ [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) index.php/$1 [QSA,L]

might work for you, you seem to problems with the conf that I wouldnt
expect to see (having to rename to htaccess.txt)