Programming MC without a progammer

You can't, unless by programmer you mean one you buy from somewhere, in which case you can try building your own. There's plenty of designs for them on the net.

PICAXE Controllers don't need a programmer. I know next to nothing about PIC's, but I think that's pretty unique to the PICAXE controllers

Well they do need a programmer, however it consists of a stero headphone jack and a couple of resistors [grin]. PICAXE Microcontrollers are indeed very easy to use, if you don't have much experience with digital electronics it'd be a good idea to get one of them instead of a straight PIC. They're designed for education so they're datasheets are very simple and easy to understand and they've got various example circuits showing you how to common things.