ports dependency bug report: perl5

[h]

on a 4.10-STABLE FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE #23: Wed Jun  2 10:21:16 CEST 2004 box of 
mine with ports tree from yesterday, portupgrade -a keeps rebuilding 
perl-5.8.5 for every port that depends on it even tho it's installed and 
registered in /var/db/pkg/.

for some reason the old perl is still stuck in /etc/make.conf
# Setting to use base perl from ports:
PERL_VER=5.8.4
PERL_VERSION=5.8.4

and when i try to reload ports perl
/var/db/pkg > use.perl port 
bash: /usr/local/bin/use.perl: /usr/local/bin/perl: bad interpreter: No such 
file or directory

weird