I've always sort of wondered this, because I have a habit of touching heatsinks. The real issue right now is, I appear to be wearing a combination of clothing that delivers devastating static shocks.

I've read some threads on this internet about this. My main concern is for my laptop - I have the habit of sticking my fingers near the fan vent, where I can deliver a shock directly to the cpu heatsink assembly (or to the VGA or HDMI connectors).

Laptops are supposed to be able to handle human fingers, but what about shocks directly to the heatsink or ports?

No, it's not possible to damage the CPU by (carefully) touching the heatsink. I would be a little bit more careful with connectors though, but often it's only possible to touch ground, the other pins a bit hidden.

There's a Darth Sideous joke in here somewhere.

my youtube started doing this intermittently following the night where I kept shocking it. Dunno if its related, tried upgrading my videocard drives, no difference.

probably gonna have to reformat to see if its a hardware issue...

So you get this green band in all Youtube videos or just some? Otherwise your computer works fine?

Disable hardware acceleration (right-click on the video, then click on settings). This is usually the fix for any Flash video problems.