2.) Java, perl, C++

3.) Python, UNIX (not a language but good for a foot into shell scripting).

4.) Now start getting into alightly more advanced of the above languages: forks, throw/catch, meta-pointers, wrappers, heuristic reasoning blah blah blah.

In high school I took Turbo C++... waste of time. It was over out fiber optic network so that the prof was from RIT and he was on one tv, then you could see the other school classrooms involved on other screens. The only good thing out of it was that you could move off camera in the classroom and sleep (I was tired a lot in high school - hell, still am).
Then in college I took 2 computer graphics classes that were both pretty low level - one was more theory, the other was only using a language that we wrote in house (so that you could really use a script to do it all and not an interface). I also took an intro comp sci class that was in pascal - and that is total crap. tons and tons of crap.
I then went on to realize that if I wanted to be a comp sci major, I'd need to spend all of my time in the labs in order to get A's - I also wanted to be an art major, and in order to get A's with that, you needed to spend all of your time in the studios. At the time I thought I was going to go into the special effects industry, so I decided to go the art route. Now I'm doing the programmer thing. Go figure.

If you are any good a picking up concepts on your own, I wouldn't bother with taking classes, I would just buy some good books (even textbooks perhaps) and teach it to yourself at home.
If you feel that you would do better in the classes, then that is cool.

You can never go wrong learning C or C++, that might not help you - but it will never hurt. Once you learn those, all else comes easliy.
Java is very popular right now, but it sucks huge hairy donkey balls... but it allows you to run anything you want very slowly on ANY PLATFORM without recompiling. whee doggie. but since it is popular, you should probably learn it. it is a stripped down C++.
Perl is fun b/c it is easy to learn - but many people consider it a "write only" language - if written to conserve space, ti is very hard to discern what exactly the person was trying to do in the code. So it makes it challenging to debug or to inherit someone else's code. There are tons of applications for it on the web though, so that is a good one to learn (I learned it in a day - it is very easy).

Javascript - easy - you can use this as a good way to learn several things. you can do dhtml with it and manipulte the XML DOM as well - but use IE as your browser if you decide to do that.

All those are good ways to learn. If I were in your shoes - I'd look on the websites of respected colleges for comp sci (Harvard, MIT, CalTech) and see what their textbooks are - then go to amazon and see if they have them (or fatbrain) - read the reviews, see what people say - see what other books are recommended....

Some of these are self taught, others require classroom learning.

If I were you I would start out with an easy object-oriented language and a good book.

let me recommend "Thinking In Java" by Bruuce Eckel. It is very easy to read.

The full text is available at amazon or on line at www.bruceeckel.com

Puc

I think I'm going to take Puc's advice about starting out with an easy object-oriented language. It sounds like Java might fit that description and there's an Intro to Java class that just started at the local univ. I'll see if I can still enroll. I'll also check out Eckel's book.

HS, I'm definitely not a math stud. I have a liberal arts background with a strong training in foreign languages (chinese, japanese, german, french, italian, latin and hebrew). Unfortunately, I have a feeling that this won't help me here, and since I'm a complete beginner, I think I'd like to start with a class.

How many languages do you think you need to know before you look for a job, and how well do you have to know them? I mean if I took a course on Java or C and taught myself JavaScript + Perl from books (since it sounds like these are easier), do you think I'd be qualified to apply for entry level positions? What else do you think I'd need to do?

The best thing you can do is show that you know how to do the stuff. I'm currently writing an encrypted instant messanger in java so that I can show in future interviews that I really do know java.
get a web account and you can show that you can do html, do some dhtml on it with javascript and you can show that too.

they will be far more impressed if they can SEE that you know what you are doing other than just hearing that you went to some class that they may or may not know about.