okay, it has come to it.
Yes, I most likely have a faulty audio controller in my laptop.
Yes, I understand that that's probably why my speakers are making unusual background noises.
And yes, I realize that this might be the reason why I can't hear anything in my 3.5mm earphones.

But, why, dear Cinnamon, WHY do you have to keep me from any kind of system settings GUI? I can no longer launch the System Settings, Network settings, sound settings, etc -- no Settings at all.
And why did you have to freeze the whole Cinnamon the first time the problem appeared? The X didn't mind it, ffs! I could move the mouse around... but that's pretty much it. Apart from switching to TTYs and moving the mouse I couldn't do anything else in the UI.

That's pretty annoying. It's not like I can remove my audio controller... (I don't think breaking off the corner of my MB where the audio region is counts as 'remove the audio controller').

This first happened when I fried my wifi µPCIe card. That's alright - I could replace it and use system settings again. But now...? How the fuck do I go around that NOW???