I downloaded the first version that you posted and it "worked for me" so I am unsure why it isn't working for you.

$ perl 976706.pl                                                 

Hello Jesse.
The time is: Sun Jun 17 18:56:19 2012
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For the printing the date in nearly any format you want you can use the DateTime module.

$ perl -MDateTime -E 'say DateTime->now->strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
+'
2012-06-18 01:58:52
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