[ast3r3x]

I'm looking for a fun new language to take up so I can start making some worthless programs. I was hoping you'd give me some advice on what you think.

Some background....
I took a c++ class, but it was very simple, not visual at all, and just a class to start you thinking about programming logic. I then started to learn javascript, but got bored with that quickly because I had no use for it. I moved to PHP, and then MySQL (is all sql the same?), and now I'm looking for something so that I can make visual programs that aren't run inside a web browser.

What I've been looking at...
I bought a cocoa book a while ago, but never got into it for whatever reason. It just seemed kinda complicated, to do all the stuff you had to do to get something simple to work. Of course it wasn't that complicated, I really just never gave it a good chance.

I have been looking to java too because I hear it's pretty easy to get networking and internet aspects working with this. That is very appealing to me.

Lastly, what sucks so much about REALBasic? I mean, it seems REALLy easy to quickly churn out a basic application that is also platform independent. I don't know why, but I have a bias against it, like it's a joke.

So, what do you think? Learn a GUI language at all or learn something like perl or python? Well, let me know what you think, I'm leaning towards java, but think it would be nice to have such integrated functionality with the OS as cocoa probably allows.

My biggest fear for any language? I'm afraid I'm going to suck it up when I have to start worrying about memory, to clear unused variables and everything.