I love Perl. You love Perl. Millions of people love and enjoy Perl. It can be used sucessfully for a myriad of different tasks. People can make money using Perl. Perl takes what is good from other languages, and omits the bad. Perl is pragmatic. Perl is popular. Perl is good. But can we admit that any attempt at describing Perl's type system as anything other than an ad-hoc mess is bound to result in inconsistancy and frustration?