hooray! i figured out how to change the per-page choices, but still cannot figure out what needs to change so it displays as a dropdown. 
also figured out that i can add the class perPage to my stylesheet and control text display, but i can't seem to assign it a margin, or background so there must be a governing class that i'm missing.
also, i'd love some clarification on this:
Code:
// perPage contains the number of items to list per page. 0 is used to indicate ALL
if (isset($_GET['perPage'])) {
$max_rows = (int) $_GET['perPage'];
if ($max_rows < 0 or $max_rows >= 5000) {
$max_rows=MAX_DISPLAY_PRODUCTS_LISTING;
//This can be found in admin - config - maximum values.
} elseif ($max_rows==0) {
$max_rows=5000;
//0 indicates ALL selected. So we use 5000 as a maximum
}
does this mean that by default the user sees all items in the category? if i changed it to
Code:
if ($max_rows < 9 or $max_rows >= 5000) {
would the user initially see 9 items per page? i couldn't get it to work like that but had already set it to remember the count across categories, so i'm not sure if that is affecting it.