I might be biased as well since I learned smalltalk+ruby about the same time prior to objective c. I personally find smalltalk derived OO much less painful than the java/c++ counterparts. But thats just my opinion, they both get the job done in the end.

I'm curious how it fries your mind exactly? Fries like Haskell in that it makes you learn different paradigms or fries as in challenges base assumptions on how things like OO/etc... work?