Serious apt-get problem -- horked whole system

[Hal Vaughan <hal@thresholddigital.com>]

I was using Ethereal, and reading the docs, when I realized the docs were for 
a newer version, so I added it with:

apt-get install etherial=.10.??-? -t testing

(I can't remember the exact version number that I found was available.)

This caused a problem with libgtk2.0-bin, where I kept getting an error that 
the post-install script exited with error code 1.  I finally found the 
script, and the error was because it wasn't being called with an argument.  
At this point, I couldn't install this package, I couldn't remove it, 
configure it or do anything.  With nothing else to do, I deleted all the 
related files in /var/dpkg/info/ that were related to this package, and tried 
to re-install and got the same errors.  I removed the deb file 
from /var/apt/cache, re-removed the files in /var/dpkg/info, and tried to 
re-install.  

I couldn't, so I removed it, which removed a ton of other packages.  I tried 
re-installing and found I had to use libgtk2.0-bin >=2.6x.  At this point, no 
matter what I do, I can't fully remove or install this package.  I did 
install it, and started reinstalling a number of the packages it forced to 
remove.  None of the re-installed programs run, giving me an error, like this 
from Abiword:

abiword: relocation error: /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: 
g_filename_display_name

So, at this point, I don't even have gdm available, so I don't want to log out 
of my session (which, since I work at home, I don't do that often anyway).

So how can I wipe anything connected with this package and make sure it 
installs correctly, so I can re-install all the packages that depend on it (I 
copied and pasted a list of all the packages it removed)?

I'm pushing hard on another project that I *HAVE* to finish, and at this 
point, I don't dare reboot or even log out of KDE because I don't want to 
have to deal with all the programs that won't restart with this package (and 
all that depended on it) removed.  I do NOT have time to re-install my 
workstation.

Any suggestions?

Thanks you!

Hal