If ya can't beat'em, join'em.

After a ton of trial-and-error, I've given up and just gone with a
pre-built package from Michael Gorven
(http://michael.gorven.za.net/raspberrypi/xbmc). This worked out will
because it drastically reduced the amount of code I had.  Now we just
add his repo and then install the package. The get_and_install_xbmc.sh
script does all the work. It also clears the userdata folder as
installed since some of the settings installed by default lead to weird
UI issues. Clearing this folder allows XBMC to fix itself. Also, we
install our own advanced config to reduce CPU usage.