Well, it got a whole lot worse after this was posted.
From what I can tell, the site was down for over 12 hours, and has only just now come back to life.
As a professional website and database developer (and a BF advertiser), that is a completely unacceptable level of service.
What was the problem?
Has it been fixed?
Was it related to all the other recently reported performance problems?
What is being done to ensure it doesn't occur in future?