My previous screen had a slightly unstable image in the bottom left & right corners. Then it blew up. So I went and bought a 4 year old Dell "19 Flatscreen monitor. I got it home, hooked it up to my case and the image on the desktop around icons and text will fade in and out of focus.
Is this my graphics card or the monitor?

A video card will not cause a monitor to blow up. You are describing two different problems with each monitor so it looks like a monitor problem. You might want to borrow a working monitor from a friend to check if the monitor is really the problem or something.