I hate "cool" code. I like simple code that works.

I hate this attitude. "Cool", or idiomatic Perl is simply code that uses the full expressive power of Perl.

If you do not appreciate just how much your every day Perl programmer relies on Perl's coolness, go learn Cobol'74 (or even '85), or Fortran IV. Once you've spent a few days dealing with the "simplicity" of those languages, you'll soon realise that almost every line of every Perl program is packed with "cool" idioms--including your own code.

The difference between the judgement of "acceptable cool", and unacceptable cool Perl idioms generally amounts to whatever point the person judging reached before they decided that they had learnt enough Perl. At that point, anything they did not bother to familiarise themselves with--so that they could read and understand "advanced Perl idioms", rather than throwing their arms up in disgust at anything that requires them to think twice about--is distained.

Cool it not an antonym of good practice.

Flexible is not an antonym of well defined.

Clever is not an antonym of simple.

That does not mean that you cannot write bad code using cool idioms, but it is equally possible, just as easy, and arguably more prevelent, to write bad code using "simple" Perl.