try to use Social Bookmarking, it helps alot when it comes to index faster and getting you a higher PR. try digg.com
Duplicate man, thats not ur articles!! Man if you are looking for PR of ur site buy 3 PR5 on ebay and after first update u will get PR3 or 4. But for what u need PR ??
Write well written and optimized posts, write articles linking to said posts, ping, build back links through directory submission and all the common methods.
actually we are creating blog for more relevance of content and also generating back links, so try to generate back links through blog it's gives benefit to your website.
You want PR, then u have to work on linkbuildings, the more anchor text high quality backlinks, the better u wil be ranked. Also, the age of your domain, the traffic also count in the process.