This thing has appeared, hovering obtrusively over my desktop (Mountain Lion):

I don't know how it got there. Presumably I pressed some key combination by accident. But I can't for the life of me figure out how to get rid of it again. It has "Esc" written on it, but pressing the escape key doesn't do anything. The arrow at the bottom takes me to "Open Speech Commands window" and "Speech Preferences...", but neither has any obvious option to turn this blue thing off.

In several online forums, the advice is to go to Speech Preferences -> Speakable Items and turn it off. But it's already off, and turning it on and off again didn't help. The blue thing just becomes grayed out (the state it's in in the screenshot above) but doesn't go away.

How can I get rid of this thing so that I can watch a movie without it hovering over the top?

This thing has appeared, hovering obtrusively over my desktop (Mountain Lion):

I don't know how it got there. Presumably I pressed some key combination by accident. But I can't for the life of me figure out how to get rid of it again. It has "Esc" written on it, but pressing the escape key doesn't do anything. The arrow at the bottom takes me to "Open Speech Commands window" and "Speech Preferences...", but neither has any obvious option to turn this blue thing off.

In several online forums, the advice is to go to Speech Preferences -> Speakable Items and turn it off. But as you can see in the screenshot below it's already off, and the blue thing is still there.

Turning Speakable Items on and off again doesn't help. The blue thing just becomes grayed out (the state it's in in the screenshot above) but doesn't go away.

How can I get rid of this thing so that I can watch a movie without it hovering over the top?