Okay, so I fixed Flash video by getting my audio card working again. For some reason, it didn't like the onboard audio (maybe because I didn't have dmix set up).
Anyway....
I'm still having freezing. When it happens, it's always in the middle of a page load or I've just clicked a link. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with it, but I often see that when it freezes, it's trying to contact an ad/spyware site like google-analytics or imwx.com
Are the marketing drones somehow fighting back against Adblock? I guess I should see if it happens with safe-mode, but I consider the internet to be nearly unusable without ad blocking.