Trying to get my head around getting a good listing (even though the rules seem to change every month), I understand that too many outgoing links are a bad thing. If I mask them using a script (any recommendations?) does this make them look like internal links and therefore OK?
AFAIK, you cannot mask outgoing links as incoming links. If you're desperate though, you could always use a JS document.write to show the links, then search engine spiders will not read them.
What makes you think outgoing links hurt you. I know that more links dilutes the page rank value of the total links but that shouldn't hurt the page itself and many believe that having outbound keyword urls on page is beneficial as google considers you a greater authority on a subject if you reference in other related quality sites.