Once I got the right syntax, it just took two lines of commands to get it to go:
http://forum.kanotix.net/viewtopic.php?t=7847
If I may say so, after trying about seven different live CD's, it looked like kanotix out of the box was the most wireless friendly. I tried madwifi with another HDD-installed distro and even after spending a couple hours in an IRC help forum, recompiling this and that, I had no sucess.
So I would recommend kanotix for completely despondent n00bs, as I was just 24 hours ago.