I accidentally did a 'chmod +x foo' when i meant to do a 'chmod a+r foo'.

-rw-r--r-- 1 casper trad 53 Jul 17 22:41 filegore
-rw-r--r-- 1 casper trad 13 Jul 17 22:41 filelemme
-rw-r--r-- 1 casper trad 24 Jul 17 22:41 nix
-rwxr-xr-- 1 casper trad 82 Jul 17 22:41 foo*

Now when i do a 'chmod a+r foo' to correct the mistake, it will not revert back to the read write permissions - is there an override?
Also it has an '*' at the end of the file now - i have some process that need to read this file - is the fact that it is now executable - will that prevent processes from readig in the file

I want to get rid of the 'x's

Use '-x' instead of '+x', probably using 'a-x'. This will remove the 'x' option from foo.