Java GUIS can be good looking

Yep - they can be.
Swing has suffered too much from bad publicity.., albeit sometimes justified.
With the advent of 6u10, performance improvement with 2D, and so on, I dare to say what Java on the desktop competes with C# WinForms easily.

Check out some NetBeans Based-GUIs... and a great framework for Java GUIs: Jide.

Check this post as well (demo at the bottom)