Help! I can't even execute my own executables any more!

[hendrik@topoi.pooq.com]

A program I wrote and has run many many times before suddenly stopped
running, giving "permission denied" errors.  Thinking this ight have to 
to with the recent C++ library changes, I recompiled it.  But this did 
not help.  I decided to strace, and get a clue what it might be trying 
to do:

hendrik@lovesong:~/dv/txt$ ls -l i686/
total 184
-rwxr-xr-x 1 hendrik hendrik  46941 2006-05-08 11:41 mtxt2ps
-rwxr-xr-x 1 hendrik hendrik 104526 2006-04-25 06:35 parseabw
-rwxr-xr-x 1 hendrik hendrik  31945 2006-05-23 08:57 txt
hendrik@lovesong:~/dv/txt$ man strace
Reformatting strace(1), please wait...
hendrik@lovesong:~/dv/txt$  strace i686/txt
execve("i686/txt", ["i686/txt"], [/* 26 vars */]) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
dup(2)                                  = 3
fcntl64(3, F_GETFL)                     = 0x2 (flags O_RDWR)
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 0), ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7f4f000
_llseek(3, 0, 0xbfa63138, SEEK_CUR)     = -1 ESPIPE (Illegal seek)
write(3, "strace: exec: Permission denied\n", 32strace: exec: Permission denied
) = 32
close(3)                                = 0
munmap(0xb7f4f000, 4096)                = 0
exit_group(1)                           = ?
Process 8317 detached
hendrik@lovesong:~/dv/txt$

It looks as if execve is failing to read the executable.  But there were 
no compilation errors, and permissions seem to be set correctly.

Does this indicate that I, or my computer, has gone mad?
Or is there something deep I need to know?

It's an ordinary 32-bit PC, running etch.

-- hendrik