And thus are we reduced to this: things are so eerily quiet in the Mac realm right now, we're actually going to try to wrench a drop or two of drama out of the fact that the keynote address at this month's Macworld Expo Tokyo will be delivered by-- and make sure your insurance is all paid up and you've got a wallet handy to bite down on lest you swallow your own tongue in shock-- Steve Jobs himself. (Hey, it's either this, or another massive rambling screed about monumentally off-topic developments in the "Redmond Justice" trial-- and we're pretty sure that running two of those back to back would get us shot at.)

Yes, faithful viewer Darcy informs us that the big news today (as reported by The Mac Observer and several other sites trying their best to ride out the drought) is that IDG Expos has officially confirmed what all but the most overcautious Mac fans had already assumed as a virtual certainty: the March 21st keynote will provide a hefty dollop of live Steveness for those lucky enough to be attending. Of course, since Steve delivering Expo keynotes-- even the Tokyo ones-- has pretty much been the status quo, this serves as a classic example of "Dog Bites Man" anti-news (now, "Keynote To Be Delivered By Singing Chicken And 8 oz. Bag of Fritos," that would be news, baby), but at this point, we'll take anything we can get. These are lean times, people. We are not proud.

And anyway, it's not like it was guaranteed that Steve would agree to haul his butt up onstage in a couple of weeks' time. For one thing, flying to Japan from Cupertino isn't exactly a walk in the park, private jet or no private jet-- and the time difference can't be too much fun, either. Add to that the fact that Steve has been known to cancel in-person keynote gigs at even domestic Expos for such frivolous alleged reasons as the imminent birth of his own children (well, okay, he eventually showed up anyway, but that's beside the point), and maybe you can appreciate that a Tokyo Stevenote was by no means a sure thing.

So there you have it: Steve's going to do the honors, thus sharing the many healthful benefits of Reality Distortion exposure to an audience in the Land of the Rising Sun. As for what he's going to talk about (especially in light of the fact that Apple has already announced that new Macs aren't in the cards), we're pretty much just expecting an encore performance of last January's San Francisco gig, with maybe a few small happy surprises thrown in-- perhaps a new iPod, or an iPhoto update or something. But hey, don't sweat the material; when all's said and done, the show is all about the man. Still, we hope he does something interesting, because if this news drought is still in full force two weeks from tomorrow, we're going to have to start broadcasting scenes consisting of nothing more than the word "flange" repeated 600 times.