If you want to receive e-mail in real-time(COOL? but have to use .appspot domain. You could off course also forward it to the .appspot domain) I would advise you to have a look at google app engine which is free to use(generous quota). You could forward the email it your webserver using asynchronous request which in turn let's you do all the cool stuf you would like it to do in PHP.
Python is pretty easy to learn especially after watching this video from Brett Slatkin explaining how to "Developing and deploying an application on Google App Engine" and the snippets in the google app engine documentation should get you started in no time.
