May I ask why you are even using Python, if you need to work around the language in such ways?

These non-idiomatic uses might be shedding a few ms, yet they ruin the readability and maintainability of the code, most of all all tools like 2to3? Why not another (non-interpreted and thus faster) language? One where the idoms work in your favor?

Also, no need to support releases from 2004 and having to groan about it.