Joy. Turns out that one of my buddy-lists (MSN, it seems) has a flaw in it due to an incomplete transaction that now causes Pidgin to burst into flames every time it tries to use that account.

Big deal, really, since I never use it other that a means for my parents to contact me, despite them being more apt to use a phone.

The only downside of all of that was having to root around and nuke all remnants of the old install -- apparently, just deleting the entry in the XML configuration won't do -- and then reinstalling and configuring the whole thing. Took about 4 minutes, sure, but it still sucks.

What does this moonspeak mean!?
I can now chat with people again. Huzzah.