While researching medusa and select/poll, I came across kqueue/kevent:
It looks mondo cool: http://people.freebsd.org/~jlemon/kqueue.pdf

I see that there is a python interface to kqueue/kevent:
http://people.freebsd.org/~dwhite/PyKQueue/

hmmm, Now I'm scratching my chinnie chin chin. :-)

-joe