Something felt weird when I was driving her home, so I went on some test runs. She is not right.

From a stand still, I can BARELY chirp the tires, and it struggles all through first gear. It'* whine almost sounds like its vibrating, it is not smooth at all...the rpms sometimes drop @ WOT and pick back up. 1-2 shift got really high and hit the limiter and struggled to go into second. It seems like it won't downshift when I step on it, or if it does the lack of power makes the downshift almost unoticeable.

I went on a high speed WOT run and the check engine light started flashing and traction control went off. That only happened once.

Under normal acceleration it drives and shifts just fine like theres nothing wrong. It still goes into all the gears on the shifter almost unoticably.

I am totally f'd if my transmission is fragged. Could this be anything else?

Sounds like you may have a bad MAF sensor or o2 Sensor.
Best way to know for sure is to have it scanned ASAP while it has the code in memory.

It sounds like the traction control is kicking in (retarding timing) through some type of fault.

if the CE is flashing that is indication of a cylinder misfire

A misfire is sounding pretty likely now. Yes, the one time the CE came on it was blinking. I drove her to my friends tonight...she was a dog. Absolutely no power, @ WOT and it made this very sad sounding whine. Sometimes it wouldn't even downshift and the RPM'* would climb so slowly the tach barely moved.

She still went in to TCC lockup, but when light throttle is applied in TCC (not enough to unlock it) the car stuttered and misfired hard.

So what should I check out? Usual suspects such as plugs, wires, ICM, coils, etc?

you need to get the code pulled so you can see what Cyl the misfore was on, or it could be multiple.....after you know the Cyl (*) then you can look at the coils, wires and the plugs

I had a problem just like this 2 years ago with an SSEI, It ended up being the porciline on one of the rear spark plugs cracked and broke in two peices. Check to see what all your spark plugs look like and go from there.

Scan here costs $49.99. I know no one with a tool...

But anyhoo...I have a spark plug tester. So I put it up to all the boots @ the coils when the engine was running. They all looked the same on the light except six. So as the engine was running I touched the spark plug boot @ the coil (I think thats what I touched anyway) and I received a massive electrical shock I am still somewhat recovering from.

I pulled the delco'* off the '89 today, so if thats the problem I can just swap those in. Could it also have been a bad wire?

Jeebus that hurt....

Ouch - about 35,000 volts!