… and I must say that I was rather surprised. I mean, it’s not a normal malfunction that PC users confront in the course of their daily lives. It’s also the kind of thing that defies typical conversations. Imagine the following discussion while hanging around at ones workplace.

“Over the weekend my monitor caught fire.”

“Really? I guess it smelled bad.”

“Yeah. The flames didn’t shoot up very high. I was kind of disappointed.”

“Too bad. Becoming a towering inferno was the least it could do before dying on you.”

And that was part of the disappointment; the flames, what little there were, were not visible. The first indication of a problem was the monitor’s refusal to power up. It just stayed in power save mode when I started up my PC. Since I had just woken up, I figured it was being difficult and went off to the bathroom to take care of my morning business. After all, what sort of mischief could a monitor get into while I took care of basic hygiene?

It wasn’t until I was partaking in the Ritual of the Brushing of the Teeth, sometime between the Spitting and the Rinsing, that I noticed the faint of aroma of burning plastic, with a hint of burning lint. Immediate inquiries to my beloved (laced with only minimal profanities in a Samuel L. Jackson kind of format) about what was burning in the kitchen led to an investigation that revealed nothing on the stove and no melting/burning/blackened plastic. From there we both started going from electrical outlet to electrical outlet, hunting for the burning plastic. The smell grew worse (and more annoying) but we had no real luck. It wasn’t until I started working over all the cords leading from the surge protectors around the desktops that I realized the odor was stronger. Hovering my face over the monitor, I finally found the burning plastic. Imagine, if you will, putting the smell of three plastic cups burning on a stove with cat dander and lint into an inhaler and then using that inhaler. That was the smell I found as my nose hovered over the back of the monitor.

The next string of profanity to issue forth from my mouth was more akin to combination of an episode of Jerry Springer and Eddie Murphy’s classic comedy routine Raw.

I quickly unplugged the monitor and took it out to the balcony, refraining from putting any water on it (electrical fires and water don’t mix). After watching it for five minutes, I determined that while there was no visible flame, it had indeed been on fire. Despite having no power applied, it was still stinking as it sat upon the balcony smoldering. With some resignation, I finished my morning routine and went out for the day, picking up a new 23” monitor while dropping off the dead one in the dumpster (no dumpster fire, in case you’re wondering).

I suppose I could complain about a major component catching fire, but to be honest, I wasn’t too angry. I picked up the monitor at a hefty discount since it was a display model. So, for $50, a 21” flat screen LCD lasted a couple of years. What more could I ask for? But what did disappoint me was that my monitor caught fire, and I didn’t even have a good story about five foot flames threatening my very life and my heroic battle to save the rest of my electronics and my cats. (I wouldn’t have to save my beloved under those circumstances; unlike the cats and the PCs, she has enough sense to leave an apartment that’s on fire.) Instead, my apartment smelled like burnt plastic for 24 hours as I put my new monitor through its paces.As you might expect, burnt plastic odors and Zeno Clash don’t mix.