anecdotally, it does seem that most dont have memory bloat. I did not start this thread as a bug report, I was hoping to get some feedback, which has been useful. I will continue to poke at my pi.
Welp, the moral of the story seems to be:
If you want a small memory footprint, use assembler. Not Perl or Python or Rails.
same as it ever has been .. but nowadays we (techies) can just throw raw compute power and vast swathes of RAM at the things we want to compute. 
the kool kydes just don't appreciate how the old-timers managed to compute big things with highly restricted resources 
The Kool Kydes (I quite like that, BTW) are at least going to experience a taste of the ludicrous RAM prices we experienced in the mid-90s... (16MB SIMs for $800 once at Fry's in about 1993...)