argh...thanks Rael. just after posting my question, i took a second look at your Wednesday post. a very dim light bulb went off over my head.
and, yes, while Radio is brill (i've never used MovableType), i was looking for something that took advantage of some of the built-in goodness of Mac OS X (ie, Apache, AppleScript, etc). i don't think anything fits that bill exactly quite yet.
i have visions of an AppleScript-Apache-XML-RPC/SOAP bridge that does two-way translation of Apple Events requests via XML-RPC (like you can do with PHP and this script). web services on/from the Mac OS X desktop.