ok. that fixed it. The answer was staring me in the face when I did a "rpm -q --verify perl" it returned:

..5.....   /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/CORE/libperl.so
S.5....T   /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/Digest/MD5.pm
S.5....T   /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/auto/Digest/MD5/MD5.so
Note: 5      MD5 sum
      S      File size
      L      Symlink
      T      Mtime
      D      Device
      U      User
      G      Group
      M      Mode 

(The Note is for me. ) MD5 sums had changed but I attributed it to some CPAN upgrade. In fact, somehow libcore.so had become corrupted.

Thanks,
Kyle