SCRIPT [watch the movie first!] SCENE 1: NEWBIE and ORWANT ORWANT: For five points each, which of these operators will not be in Perl 6? Lambda, arrow, thorn, ankh, pentagram, and that smiley teddy bear from that Grateful Dead album. NEWBIE: [CONFOUNDED] ORWANT: [MAKES BUZZER NOISE] Wrong! I'll now turn the question over to the other team. CUT AWAY, ORWANT LOOKING AT EMPTY SPACE BESIDE NEWBIE, WHO LOOKS PERPLEXED. BEAT CUT BACK ORWANT: I'm sorry, the answer is that they'll all be in, thanks to Unicode. SCENE 2: NEWBIE and ABIGAIL NEWBIE: You're Abigail? ABIGAIL: [NODS] NEWBIE: *You're* Abigail? ABIGAIL: [NODS] NEWBIE: But you're ... ABIGAIL: ... Dutch? NEWBIE: No, you're ... ABIGAIL: [PEERING DOWN AT HIM] ... tall? NEWBIE: Well, yes, but ... Abigail? ABIGAIL: [NODS] NEWBIE: You're a ... a ... ABIGAIL: Strapping hunk of manhood? NEWBIE: [NODS] ABIGAIL: Wait until you meet Randal Schwartz. NEWBIE: He's a strapping hunk of manhood too? ABIGAIL: Happily married housewife in Oregon. Two kids and a minivan. NEWBIE: [SHOCKED] Boobies? ABIGAIL: [NODDING] Bigtime. SCENE 3: NEWBIE and ELAINE ELAINE: Testosterone-crazed tiny-penised little motherfuckers who wouldn't know what to do with a woman if she spoke, much less how to find the clitoris or what a female orgasm sounds like when it HASN'T been overdubbed. Oh they talk big with their porn and their biyatches, but if a woman actually speaks to them they freeze and stutter. they DO say anything they're looking only at your breasts. Like they've never seen a real set before. Yes, flesh and fat kids, not silicone, not implanted pushed-up airbrushed boobies ... are you getting this? NEWBIE: [STUNNED LOOK] ELAINE: They always shut up when you mention boobies. SCENE 4: NEWBIE and JARKKO JARKKO: HI - ET - AN - YI - A - MI NEWBIE: HEE ET A YAM JARKKO: [REPEATS] NEWBIE: HI ET AND HAM JARKKO: [REPEATS] FADE TO BLACK FADE BACK UP JARKKO: [REPEATS] NEWBIE: [GETS IT RIGHT] JARKKO: Yes! Now let's try: [INCREDIBLY LONG PIECE OF FINNISH] SCENE 5: NEWBIE and DAN PROPS REQUIRED: PEN AND PAPER DAN: Have you noticed that a lot of the Perl 6 and Parrot people are into anime? NEWBIE: [SHRUGS] And? DAN: You know how we're going to fund it, don't you? NEWBIE: Cartoon porn with moon-eyed prepubescent girls? DAN: Well, yes, but that'll only get us the first five million. But to build the Perl Center for the Arts, the Perl Stadium, and the Perl Pleasure Dome, I figure we'll need at least ten more million. You're not going to get that with bake sales and pledge drives, my friend. There's only one way to raise that kind of cash--collectable card games. Think Pokemon meets Magic: The Gathering gets its ass kicked by Buffy The Vampire Slayer. NEWBIE: You think this will work? DAN: Oh yes. Which would you rather have, a tote bag or a Gold and Blue +6 Larry of Perpetual Apocalypse? NEWBIE: Actually, those moon-eyed prepubescent girls sounded pretty good. SCENE 6: NEWBIE and SCHWERN PROPS REQUIRED: PAD AND PEN SCHWERN: Clairol extra-strength, with an extra hot curling iron. The trick is to leave it in five minutes longer than the bottle says. NEWBIE: [WRITES THIS DOWN] SCHWERN: And overalls. Always blue denim. Never checks. Checks are for fucking farmers. Do I look like a farmer? Do I look like a fucking farmer? Do I have cows? Do I know the difference between fucking Wheat and fucking maize? What is maize? FUCK farmers! Fuck them with their fucking corncobs right up the poop chute! Fuck fuck! Let the ass-fucking begin! NEWBIE: [FLEES] SCENE 7: NEWBIE and SIMON COZENS NEWBIE: So what do YOU think about Perl 6? SIMON: When I heard of it, I thought it was a joke. Then I worked on it. I named part of it after a joke. Then I came to realize it is a joke. Then I left. NEWBIE: So you don't do any more Perl 6 work? SIMON: Well, I wrote a Perl 6 regexp engine before breakfast this morning. NEWBIE: So you are working on Perl 6 then. SIMON: Oh hell no, pack of wankers. NEWBIE: But you wrote the regular expression engine. SIMON: Yeah, but I write a lot of modules. Don't take it personally. Also before breakfast this morning I did B::Generate, Generate::Optimize, B::Optimize, Mail::Generate, B::Mail, B::Generalize, Johnny::B::Good, Mail::Optimate, GTK::Handicapped, GTK::Period, and PMS::Period. NEWBIE: How do you DO that? SIMON: It's simple. I have an infinite number of monkeys. Actually, it's only a MAXINT number of monkeys, but it's a good first-order approximation. SCENE 8: NEWBIE and URI URI: [MAKES KISSY FACE AND RUBS HIS NIPPLES] NEWBIE: [RUNS AWAY] SCENE 9: NEWBIE and DAMIAN DAMIAN: Ok, so you with me? The arrow becomes the dot, the dot becomes the underscore, the underscore had no meaning but the dollar sign, at and percent all mean what they did before except when they don't. The arrow means a sub, angle brackets are iterators except when they're comparators but they're never globs except when you're iterating over filenames. Every block is a closure, every closure can be prebound, and there are a couple of dozen types of context including hyperoperated. NEWBIE: Hyperwhat? DAMIAN: Hyperoperators. They're singularities in the code-space continuum. We're taking the language to Wall Factor Five CUT TO LARRY LARRY: I cannae push it any faster than that, cap'n! CUT BACK TO DAMIAN DAMIAN: Did I say continuum? I meant continuations. NEWBIE: And this is Perl? DAMIAN: Absolutely. I've already implemented all this in Perl 5. I'm backporting it to Perl 1 as we speak. [BEAT] Done. It'll be on CPAN in five minutes. NEWBIE: How do you DO that? DAMIAN: When you can snatch the punctuation from the Larry, it will be time for you to leave. SCENE 10: NEWBIE and LARRY LARRY: So, Elrond, Tom Bombadil and a Ring-Wraith walk into this bar ... SCENE 11: NEWBIE and DOMINUS DOMINUS: [compilation of his #perl best: retardo, stupid, etc.] http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=a6ukat%24a4b%241%40plo ver.com SCENE 12: NEWBIE and NAT NAT: So, have you learned your lesson? NEWBIE: [MONOTONE LIKE A ZOMBIE] Yes. Perl is good. NAT: And ... ? NEWBIE: Perl can do everything. NAT: And ... ? NEWBIE: Perl 6 will do more. NAT: And ... ? NEWBIE: Moon-eyed prepubescent girls are good. NAT: Uh ... NEWBIE: Men are pigs. NAT: What? NEWBIE: And there was something to do with mantits. CUT TO URI CUT BACK to NEWBIE AND NAT NEWBIE and NAT SHUDDER NAT: Well, I guess on the whole you did get the YAPC thing down. What about Perl? NEWBIE: Whitespace bad. NAT: Dollar signs? NEWBIE: Dollar signs good. NAT: Larry? NEWBIE: Definitely weirder than Guido. NAT: Damian? NEWBIE: Incomprehensible. Is he from New Zealand? NAT: Uh, no. So what next for you? NEWBIE: Well, I have a LOT of material for my lightning talk at Python 11. NAT: Dare I ask what it's called? CREDITS ROLL