Numerous people suggested I skip the whole shell script thing and just do it in AppleScript. So for fun I did. The following AS does the same thing:

on run
tell application "Microsoft Entourage" to run
tell application "Mail" to run
tell application "Internet Explorer" to run
end run

With one notable difference: the shell script launches the applications concurrently while the AppleScript launches them consecutively. I think I like concurrently better. [ Discuss ]