combine two mySql resources

I have often wanted to do arbitrary 'ordering' from mysql query where the item looked for comes first.. and everything else then follows

so I wondered if I could do this

$sqlstring="SELECT from blah WHERE my_item_id = $itemid"
$result = mysql_query($sqlstring);

and then do a complimentary
$sqlstring2="SELECT from blah WHERE my_item_id != $itemid"
$result2 = mysql_query($sqlstring2);

and lastly combine $result and $result2 using an array operator

(and my 'while' statement will handle output without adjustment)

but it seems the mysql result is not an array - it appears to be a "Resource"

can I combine two mySql resources using this method?

First, you could do the ordering entirely within a single SQL query

...ORDER BY CASE my_item_id WHEN $itemid THEN 0 ELSE 1 END ASC

Something like that, anyway.

Second, of course array functions don't work on resources; you need to read the results into an array or two and then combine the arrays.