MySQL hourly crashes and tables locking

I am new at drupal and at the whole IT thing, so if you explain what I need to do, please kindly use layman's language. My website is hosted on a virtual server cloud. Devel showed cache_set tables taking more than 12ms. Also, my cPanel showed the following:

mysql> show processlist;
+------+-----------------+-----------+---------------------+---------+------+----------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Id | User | Host | db | Command | Time | State | Info |
+------+-----------------+-----------+---------------------+---------+------+----------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 977 | rp1 | localhost | rpw| Query | 102 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT u.uid, u.name, u.picture, count(*) as node_count FROM users u JOIN node n ON n.uid = u.uid JO |
| 1002 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 148 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT u.uid, u.name, u.picture, count(*) as node_count FROM users u JOIN node n ON n.uid = u.uid JO |
| 1003 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 150 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT u.uid, u.name, u.picture, count(*) as node_count FROM users u JOIN node n ON n.uid = u.uid JO |
| 1004 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 157 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT u.uid, u.name, u.picture, count(*) as node_count FROM users u JOIN node n ON n.uid = u.uid JO |
| 1012 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 159 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT DISTINCT(node.nid) AS nid_1,
node.nid AS nid,
node.title AS node_title,
node.language AS node |
| 1022 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 153 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT DISTINCT(node.nid) AS nid_1,
node.nid AS nid,
node.title AS node_title,
node.language AS node |
| 1033 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 154 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT DISTINCT(node.nid) AS nid_1,
node.nid AS nid,
node.title AS node_title,
node.language AS node |
| 1034 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 161 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT DISTINCT(node.nid) AS nid_1,
node.nid AS nid,
node.title AS node_title,
node.language AS node |
| 1139 | leechprotect | localhost | leechprotect | Sleep | 2931 | | NULL |
| 1182 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 1097 | Copying to tmp table | SELECT COUNT(*) FROM (SELECT DISTINCT(node.nid) AS nid_1,
node.nid AS nid,
node.title AS node_title, |
| 1321 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 35 | Locked | UPDATE users SET access = 1325713889 WHERE uid = 4 |
| 1350 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 33 | Locked | UPDATE users SET access = 1325713891 WHERE uid = 4 |
| 1480 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 108 | Locked | UPDATE node_counter SET daycount = daycount + 1, totalcount = totalcount + 1, timestamp = 1325713816 |
| 1486 | root | localhost | NULL | Query | 0 | NULL | show processlist |
| 1489 | rp1| localhost | rpw| Query | 32 | Locked | SELECT u.*, s.* FROM users u INNER JOIN sessions s ON u.uid = s.uid WHERE s.sid = 'dd8c602e7dd899a2a |