After a full day of poring over the answers here, I find this buried away where it took forever to find:
http://answers.splunk.com/questions/7191/log-file-not-breaking-correctly/7211#7211
And what do you know. There were a number of incorrect assumptions tucked away in the learned app files, including some entries in files other than props. Cleaning those out made everything work like the magic I was expecting.
Thanks meno!
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