How do I properly paytomany using electrum via script?
WOW....so this never got answered by anyone else....okay let's share the answer for you all as I eventually figured it out but had forgotten that I wrote this question:

electrum paytomany "[[\"17Umi7fbYuKixnr8nRq16kMESWgJVc66s\", 0.05], [\"17Umi7fbYuKixnr8nRq16kMESWgJVc66s\", 0.05], [\"17Umi7fbYuKixnr8nRq16kMESWgJVc66s\", 0.05], [\"17Umi7fbYuKixnr8nRq16kMESWgJVc66s\", 0.05], [\"17Umi7fbYuKixnr8nRq16kMESWgJVc66s\", 0.05], [\"17Umi7fbYuKixnr8nRq16kMESWgJVc66s\", 0.05], [\"17Umi7fbYuKixnr8nRq16kMESWgJVc66s\", 0.05], [\"17Umi7fbYuKixnr8nRq16kMESWgJVc66s\", 0.05], [\"17Umi7fbYuKixnr8nRq16kMESWgJVc66s\", 0.05], [\"17Umi7fbYuKixnr8nRq16kMESWgJVc66s\", 0.05]]"


So each address to be paid must reside within its own array which is itself enclosed into a parent array of all those payout requests...the slashes are simply there to escape the quotes so they're included within the string.  I actually ended up doing something other than bash but utlimately this is the string you need to format in order to paytomany using electrum.  Still don't know what the -v nor the -h are for (op...nevermind they mean Help and Verbose)...-P for portable wallet (meaning it can be put onto something like a usb drive (a portable filesystem essentially)... Hope this can help some other fellow web traveller in the future ;)