How I solved the problem
Here is how my issue was resolved:
I have apple care (first big plus-- you always get good treatment from apple) so I called numerous times, had a product specialist assigned to me. I had his actual email and phone number-- was able to bypass the queues-- nice.
The product specialist had me go in to my local apple retailer and they installed not one, but two new keyboards. Problem remained.
Next I had not two, but three logic boards installed. (the guy at the store just rolled his eyes because the logic board is so expensive he wondered why they didn't just ship me a new machine-- but he made a killing installing new logic boards for me so he was fine with it all. Unfortunately, problem persisted.
Finally, I told my product specialist I thought it was time apple ponied up to the bar and sent me a new machine, which they agreed to do, and made it reasonably painless to do.
So, after all the firmware, all the hardware, and all the software updates, I needed a new machine to solve the problem. Since I got a new MBP from apple the problem has not occurred once. I do notice that the problem seemed to start after I switched to leopard from the version of Tiger I was running, and as an experiment it may be worth running Tiger without any updates for a while to see if it runs without the hyper annoying elp! issue.
Maybe you have apple care. Now is the time to work it.
Good luck.