Wait, silly me. Lateral thinking solution.

Just replace Hijack with a standard factory kernel (I think Mark even has a standard factory kernel .zimage at his site so you only have to install the kernel and not the whole software) and then the exec lines will be ignored. You can edit the config with emplode at that point.

(Note that you'll have to pull the power from the player, start the kernel application, then apply the power when prompted.)

God, I'm so stupid for not thinking of this before.