And I don't like doing silly things (except on purpose).

Over the long term, symbiosis is more useful than parasitism. More fun, too. Ask any mitochondria.

I'm afraid my gut level reaction is basically, proceed is cute, but cute doesn't cut it in the emergency room.

Reserve your abuse for your true friends.

To be a good artist, you have to serve the work of art and allow it to be what it is supposed to be.

Well, you can implement a Perl peek() with unpack('P',...). Once you have that, there's only security through obscurity.

Would you trust the linguistic intuitions of someone who has been studying Latin or Greek for three days?