Multiple bzcat processes

Question

Oct 2008 20" Intel iMac running 10.6.8 with 6 GB of memory.
Memory had filled up recently -- due to Firefox, of course! Was down to 35 MB free out of 6 GB.
After quitting FF (which took a few minutes) I noticed several bzcat processes, each using about 25% - 30% CPU. Initially the kernel was taking up maybe 70% CPU. Quit all apps. Still had the bzcat processes running. CPU was maxed out at some point (at least during FF shutdown). Rebooted. Fixed. Any idea what this is? See attached screenshot.
I don't know if this is related, but I'm also haveing trouble with Time Machine backups taking over an hour (I have a separate discussion thread on that: https://discussions.apple.com/message/22528453#22528453).
Time machine backups take way too long

Answer 1

I found the problem. Time Machine Buddy broke, and seems to have created the following processes:
new-host:~ alanfeldman$ cat a.tmp | egrep ' 220 | 2839 | 2846 '
  501   220   124   0   0:07.18 ??         0:09.65 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/DashboardClient.app/Co ntents/MacOS/DashboardClient
  501  2839   220   0   0:00.00 ??         0:00.01 /bin/sh -c bzcat /var/log/system.log.0.bz2 | cat - /var/log/system.log | grep -E 'backupd\[353\]'
  501  2840  2839   0   0:00.33 ??         0:11.07 bzcat /var/log/system.log.0.bz2
  501  2841  2839   0   0:00.44 ??         0:00.48 cat - /var/log/system.log
  501  2842  2839   0   0:00.29 ??         0:00.54 grep -E backupd\[353\]
  501  2846   220   0   0:00.00 ??         0:00.01 /bin/sh -c bzcat /var/log/system.log.0.bz2 | cat - /var/log/system.log | grep -E 'backupd\[[0-9]+\]: Starting ' | tail -n25 | sed -E 's/^.+backupd\[//; s/]:.+$//' | uniq
  501  2847  2846   0   0:00.24 ??         0:05.99 bzcat /var/log/system.log.0.bz2
  501  2848  2846   0   0:00.23 ??         0:00.25 cat - /var/log/system.log
  501  2849  2846   0   0:00.16 ??         0:00.31 grep -E backupd\[[0-9]+\]: Starting
  501  2850  2846   0   0:00.00 ??         0:00.00 tail -n25
  501  2851  2846   0   0:00.00 ??         0:00.00 sed -E s/^.+backupd\[//; s/]:.+$//
  501  2852  2846   0   0:00.00 ??         0:00.00 uniq
new-host:~ alanfeldman$
Sorry to have bothered you all.