Aptitude slow package initialization

[Arthur Barlow <arthurbarlow@earthlink.net>]

I'm running unstable on a x86 machine.  About a month ago Aptitude  
recommended uninstalling itself, which I overrode for awhile then one  
day decided to let it do it, thinking I could reinstall it.  Well, I  
was wrong.  There was a dependency problem for awhile and it's only  
been recently that I could reinstall it.

The problem now is that when I run it, it takes forever to do the  
package initialization process.  It's never been this slow before.   
So I did an "apt-get clean", which made no difference.  I also tried  
an "apt-cache gencaches", which also made no difference.  Anyone have  
any suggestions?