It uses fuses, and not unusually often, no, just the usual "Too many things plugged in to an outdated electrical system" situations. If they blew more frequently I'd have yanked the fuse box and replaced it with breakers, as fuses are expensive.

I've fiddled with the electrical system, replacing light switches and a few fixtures - it predates aluminum wires quite considerably, the biggest problem being that many of the fixtures predate grounding wires (which started becoming standardized around the same time as aluminum wires, actually), and there don't seem to be issues with the lines themselves, nor with the fixtures (even new fixtures exhibit this behavior, at least until they stop working). My father, an electrical technician, also took a look, and threw up his hands.

Electromagnetic flux is the only explanation I can come up with for the behavior. (The lights don't flicker to full brightness - you can only tell that it's happening if the room is very dark, and it certainly isn't bright enough to see by. CFL bulbs actually exhibit the behavior significantly worse than incandescent bulbs, another suggestion that it's EMF.)