Hello there,
Welcome to the Monastery! Make yourself at home. As BrowserUK suggested, start by getting a binary Perl distribution from http://activestate.com so you can play. Then pull up your browser (if you haven't got it yet, get Firefox -- not strictly necessary, but good :-) and start reading perldoc from the top. The order suggested in perlintro works fine for many.
I've found that when I'm learning a new language, I do best reading already-working code. If that's true for you, take a look at Cool Uses for Perl and Code Catacombs right here in the monastery. (Don't venture into Obfuscation until you've warmed up a little.) If you run into problems, don't be afraid to join the Seekers of Perl Wisdom. Or just ask in the Chatterbox.
Before you know it, you'll be signing your nodes JAPH like all the others.