Maybe this will make you feel less cheap-and-lame: you might get a substantial speed improvement by compiling your own perl. My perl build is about 30% faster than my vendor perl.

My private perl allows me to install modules without worrying about breaking system utilities that rely on old versions of perl and modules. This actually happened to a friend of mine once. He had the system version of perl restored, and I had to switch to my own private build.

Some people, who I greatly respect, share your disdain for using a perl that is different from /usr/bin/perl, and I'm still wondering why that is. I've never heard a rational explanation for it. I'll build a new perl at the drop of a hat!