Unable to install or upgrade packages via Synaptic or apt-get (Hoary)

[Will McCutchen]

When I got home from work today, I sat down to update my Hoary
installation as I normally do:

 - Open Synaptic
 - Refresh
 - Mark All Upgrades
 - Apply

After the packages are downloaded, the black "Applying Changes..."
window pops up, and I get the following output:

Preconfiguring packages ...
Setting up sed (4.1.2-2) ...

No `START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY' and no `This file documents'.
install-info(/usr/share/info/sed.info): unable to determine
description for `dir' entry - giving up
dpkg: error processing sed (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 sed
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


I get the same output from apt-get dist-upgrade, too.

I'm new to apt, and I'm not sure where to go from here.  Is there a
mistake in one of the new packages that were downloaded?  Did
something get corrupted somewhere on my system?

Thanks for any help you can give me.


-Will