I check in with what's going on in the Perl community every so often because I find I usually learn a lot more from them than, say, from the Ruby or Python community.

Perl 6 does seem to have become a perpetual playground for language experimentation, but that hardly makes it Duke Nukem Forever -- you can use it for that today.

Perl 5 is alive and well, seeing regular updates, and seems to have a future, even if its glory days as far as mindshare are over.