Quick version on bless: It marks a reference as an object. The reference can be to any type of varible: scalar, array, hash, are all common. You will need to figure out some way of accessing the data you want to access as the object's data based on the contents of that variable.

Common strategies include: just putting it in the scalar (for simple data), or array/hash (for more complex); and putting a key into some other data structure into the variable (inside-out uses package-level hashes, with the key being the blessed variable's address. Some people like to use arrays, for faster access.).