Let me pass on some useful information to those who might be suffering the same problem:
If you find that your monitor is flickering and you are sitting under fluorescent lights, try the following:
1) Right-click on your desktop, and choose Properties.
2) On the screen that comes up, click on the Settings tab (it's usually at the end)
3) On the settings tab, look for a button labeled "Advanced" or "Advanced Properties" (it varies, depending on the operating system). Click it.
4) Poke around through the tabs on the screen that was brought up, and look for a drop-down box labeled "Refresh rate". (On Windows '95, this was on the Adapter tab; on Windows 2000, it was on the Monitor tab).
5) Set the rate to something other than 60HRz
Fluorescent lights have a cycle rate of 120HRz. If your monitor is refreshing at 60 HRz, that means that every second refresh on the monitor will coincide with a peak on the light, causing it to appear to flicker. If you want a cheap strobe light effect, this is great. If you want to be able read anything, it is kind of a pain.
(Wow. That physics I took waaaay back in high school is still useful for something!)