diff --git a/SConstruct b/SConstruct
index 228faa4d84..9bc0db6d54 100644
--- a/SConstruct
+++ b/SConstruct
@@ -364,6 +364,19 @@ conf.Finish()
 #wx windows flags
 if env['HAVE_WX']:
     wxconfig.ParseWXConfig(env)
+    #this smells like a hack, but i dont know any other way to fix this
+    #right now. ParseWXConfig calls wx-config --libs, which returns
+    #"-arch i386" on my box (and probably also tmator's).
+    #SCons.ParseConfig makes this a tuple, which is
+    # 1) a problem for utils.filterWarnings
+    # 2) a duplicate (and conflicting) set of arch specifiers
+    #this mainly affects MacOSX, since darwin builds explicitly get
+    #those set around line 280.
+    if sys.platform == 'darwin':
+	env['CCFLAGS'] = [ 
+	    f 
+	    for f in filter(lambda x:isinstance(x, basestring), env['CCFLAGS'])
+	    ]
 else:
     print "WX not found or disabled, not building GUI"
 
diff --git a/SconsTests/utils.py b/SconsTests/utils.py
index 74a4037109..9b0ce04930 100644
--- a/SconsTests/utils.py
+++ b/SconsTests/utils.py
@@ -5,8 +5,7 @@ import platform
 def filterWarnings(self, flags):
     return ' '.join(
         flag
-        # flags might contain tuples, like ('-arch','i386')
-        for flag in map(lambda x:(x,'='.join(x))[isinstance(x,tuple)],flags)
+        for flag in flags
         if not flag.startswith('-W')
         )