You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but probably is not suitable for your application.
See complete documentation, or API help for more information. 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <parse displaytitle="API">
    <text xml:space="preserve">&lt;blockquote class=&quot;lappy email&quot;&gt;
Dear Strong Bad,
&lt;br /&gt;
My job is terrible, but it's the only job I have.&lt;br /&gt;
Unfortunately, I don't know how to get a better one.&lt;br /&gt;
Every job I've ever had made me feel like crap.&lt;br /&gt;
Do you have any ideas?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Woefully yours,
&lt;br /&gt;
Nameless Worker Drone
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;blockquote class=&quot;lappy email&quot;&gt;
]
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;!-- 
NewPP limit report
Preprocessor node count: 5/1000000
Post-expand include size: 365/2097152 bytes
Template argument size: 0/2097152 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 0/100
--&gt;
</text>
    <langlinks />
    <categories />
    <links />
    <templates>
      <tl ns="4" exists="" xml:space="preserve">HRWiki:Sandbox</tl>
    </templates>
    <images />
    <externallinks />
    <sections />
  </parse>
</api>