Help! There is a seething mass of snakes under my desk

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I have a problem. It is a problem I try to hide out of sight and out of mind, one I try to pretend doesn't exist. But it does, and every so often it raises its ugly head to bite me. Most recently, I needed to replace an Ethernet switch as I needed more ports. As I unplugged the old switch, my monitor turned off. Why? Because under my desk I have a cable catastrophe. The mere act of unplugging the old switch had so disturbed and enraged the rat's nest of cables under my desk that in retaliation it decided to turn off my monitor.

So intertwined and confused is the mess beneath my desk that even the most mundane of acts—plugging in a new gadget, removing an old one, sometimes just even moving my feet—threatens to destroy everything.

It is true that my collection of cables is uncommonly large. Three monitors with integrated USB hubs means a triplicate set of power, DisplayPort, and USB cables. 5.1 surround sound creates a quintet of cheapo Monoprice speaker cable, along with a lone RCA cable for the subwoofer. Wired Ethernet is still the fastest, most reliable form of network connectivity, so I have Cat 5e (or maybe it's 6, who even knows?) in abundance; a cable for my receiver, two for my PC, an upstream link to my router, a cable for my phone, and yet more for a second PC. And then there's USB. So much USB. USB for charging phones. USB for an Xbox 360 controller. USB for a colorimeter. USB for mouse, USB for keyboard, USB for USB hubs, USB for a webcam, USB for a memory card reader, USB for a Wi-Fi adaptor. And on top of all that, there's the weird USB-on-one-end, registered jack-on-the-other-end that's used for my UPS.