Programming note
The spammers are in the midst of their biggest and most sustained broadside against this site yet. Most of this is going on behind the scenes, but if you're noticing poor response times, that's likely why.
The good news is that I've finally got a short-term workaround and (hopefully) a long-term solution. Immediately after New Year's, I plan to implement the fix as part of my server migration, and then things should be good as new. Better, even. Bear with me for a few more days....