Being famous has its benefits, but fame isn't one of them.
Well, you can implement a Perl peek() with unpack('P',...). Once you have that, there's only security through obscurity.
For the sake of argument I'll ignore all your fighting words.
Just because you're into control doesn't mean you're in control.
True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to others, not by how much you can coerce others to do what you want.
Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse.