Code:
evil@saturn:~$ killall pulseaudio;rm -rf ~/.pulse;rm ~/.pulse-cookie;pulseaudio --start
pulseaudio: no process found
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup failed.
I figured out the issue. Apt-get upgrade had installed pulseaudio-esound-compat:i386, and removed pulseaudio-esound-compat. Apparently pulseaudio won't start when that package is missing. You'd think it would be a dependency or something.