After lunch, I opened my year-old MacBook Pro from its slumber to find a nice set of off-center racing stripes down my screen. Turns out, they go away if I jostle the monitor panel a bit, but that's not going to cut it. The vertical lines will reappear and continue to remind me of the cheap and overrated engineering.
I'm very disappointed by this. My options right now are either to pay to get it fixed or pay to get a new computer. I can't stand the thought of going back to Windows, really. However, the thought of giving Apple another cent of my money is really putting me off. This one forum thread alone can regale you with 12 pages of anecdotes about this same problem with MacBook Pros. Even while under warranty, some folks have gone through three or more new computers—or so the stories say.
UPDATE: Apple has kindly offered to cover the costs of the repair. It's still rather disappointing though.