Thanks for the info. Man, this is a PITA :S Think I may have to take a break, and come back to it tomorrow.

There is definitely something up - because even using basic DBI connection, it still messes it up:

    my $dsn = "DBI:mysql:database=$db_cfg->{database};host=$db_cfg->{h
+ost};port=3307";
    my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $db_cfg->{login}, $db_cfg->{password}
+);

    $dbh->{mysql_enable_utf8} = 1;

    my $sth = $dbh->prepare( "INSERT INTO ReadingGrabCache SET title =
+ ?" );
       $sth->execute( $title ) or die $DBI::errstr;
[download]

Eugh :/