So I mentioned yesterday that mod_perl and I were at odds. Well, today I took things into my own hands and tracked down what was going on. Basically the xml output module was infecting non-xml content because a tied output wasn't getting cleaned up. I won't really explain more than that, since it's funky perl and pretty convoluted, but if you really care the changes are this patch in the eThreads arch repository. Summary: those ugly visible   should be a thing of the past.