ARGH UNICODE

So I'm making an IRC bot based on PircBot. This is your basic bot, able to learn facts it is taught, and respond based on the messages it gets, as well as a few other commands.

It doesn't split strings from my text files properly, in order to compare them to the message. Apparently unicode is adding a null value between all of my characters. How to fix this, I am still working on.

But this is now my subject of interest and frustration.

EDIT:

Also, I apologize for the lack of uploads. All-County Band ate my week.