I had to read this post 5 times before i could understand it a little.
You had big grades in grammar class ? 
There's, in my point of view , one way to test if your cd writer is gone wacky. And that's to write , write and write again. You could use a CD-RW disc for that to save a lot of money.
If it's under warranty and its writing sucks ; I suggest bringing it back.
As for the media.. I've heard from Memorex and i have never heard Memorex being praised as a good quality stable cd media.
This hasn't have to be a bad thing in general.
My experience is that you pay for good quality.
In the cdfreaks shop there are lots of high quality cd-r's.
It couldn't hurt of course to change to another brand for a while.
