Thanks, guys.
seanchai, thanks for the advice, but I should have mentioned that I'd already run a Trace Route on both shemaleyum.com and grooby.com and neither attempt returned -- or, indeed, returns -- any servers or pings whatsoever. After a pause, the command prompt simply coughs up the line: "unable to resolve target system name".
Still thinking a virus or trojan was at work, I ran a full virus/trojan sweep, and a preliminary spyware scan, and neither has made the slightest hint of difference. I've also got a tool called "Hijack This", which allows one to (very carefully) delete certain offending lines from the registry/startup. This got me out of a spot of bother with a virus I had once before, but there were no offending lines this time.
I don't know what it is, unless AOL has taken a sudden disliking to shemales and barred all its users from shemaleyum and grooby, but *only* those sites. Once again, I must stress that every other site, big and small, corporate and private, national and international, legal and not so legal (
), works, all other things being equal.
Well, further to Ila's words, I will continue this discussion, should I be unable to find a solution, in JohnDowe's computer thread. I'm pretty computer-savvy myself, though, so if I can't fix it, I'm not sure anyone else on this site can. Still, it might give everyone cause to don their thinking caps.
