problem: both dselect and apt hang at "Correcting dependencies"

[Rev GRC Sperry <flubber@xmission.com>]

I can't install or upgrade anything right now as dselect and apt both
hang (taking my system load to 1.0) while trying to "Correcting
dependencies..." I'm using Potato, of course. Heh.

Here's output from dselect:

Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Merging Available information
Replacing available packages info, using /var/cache/apt/available.
Information about 4108 package(s) was updated.
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Correcting dependencies...


And here it is from apt-get -f upgrade:

quasar:/etc/apt# apt-get -f upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Correcting dependencies...

I've never seen this before and it must not be a common problem since
searching at: http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/#search didn't get me
any info, or on the web in general for that matter. 

Some context that might be useful:

I was having a problem the other day when I was trying to add some debs
during install, as I was getting some errors, so I exited dselect after
getting the errors (general install errors, it appeared) and then I
commented out a line for a site in /etc/apt/sources.list that has some
new kde debs and then went back to dselect. I updated again and didn't
get errors from the kde deb site but started to get the "correcting
dependencies" hang forever problem. I assume that the database what have
you that keeps track of dependencies is corrupt, or something of the
sort. If I recall correctly, libc6 was recently upgraded?

Any ideas/insights appreciated. I'm sure I've pooched something so please
just send ideas on how I can fix my system. ;-j

-Grant
fallout@atomicage.com