emacs is an extremely powerful, high-functionality, feature-rich text editor. This means that it is a CPU pig, and overly complex.

If you find yourself stuck in this gordian knot CTRL-ALT-META-verse, never fear. Come back to this node, and enter the following simple keystrokes:

  • CTRL-Z
  • ps auxww | grep emacs | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9

There. All fixed!