I think I have a slightly more twisted reason for getting into perl.

Along time ago, when I was a student, doing a course I hated, (or not doing it, as the case may be), I found myself bored at home, with free internet. So what does a 19 year old eventually get into, once he tires of endless pr0n? No, not perl! Hacking! L33t!
Actually, I got into Hackerslab.org, an awesome site / game.

Im not going to tell you what level 14 involved, suffice to say that I needed to learn a programming langage to do it. I quickly taught myself the rudiments of sockets and arrays, and wrote what I still consider the best code I have ever produced. (If anyone's interested, its on perlmonk.org, at /home/smitz/honeycomb.pl)

And so perl stuck, cos it rules, obviously!

SMiTZ