If I had to type that many angle brackets just for that little code, I'd strangle someone. =) Larry has made some noise about adding "Little Language" support to perl so that you could devise an alternate syntax or three. I just think the syntax you currently have is vile and without merit, I think the idea you have about transformable syntax is a perfectly valid one, hopefully in Perl 6 you will be able to do a personal syntax like that and still hand out clean, pretty perl code to the rest of the world.

Since you have the interest and the latin-ish quote for a sig, you should check out Lingua::Romana::Perligata see what a frightening thing Damian Conway dreamed up...

--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)