usplash takes 100% CPU, even after logged in, until process is killed

Login as normal, I note 1 of the two CPUs is pegged, open console, run top and see this:

<top>
rpickett@rpickett:~$ top

top - 09:10:57 up 13 min, 6 users, load average: 2.70, 2.55, 1.54
Tasks: 250 total, 3 running, 247 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu0 : 13.2%us, 33.1%sy, 0.3%ni, 27.4%id, 25.7%wa, 0.2%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st
Cpu1 : 9.9%us, 58.5%sy, 0.7%ni, 13.0%id, 17.6%wa, 0.1%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 3604904k total, 2210608k used, 1394296k free, 755972k buffers
Swap: 7847744k total, 0k used, 7847744k free, 747404k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
  490 root 20 0 9212 792 616 R 100 0.0 12:43.60 /sbin/usplash -c
</top>

CPU is 100% for usplash which is now doing "nothing".

`sudo kill 490` frees it up.

other info:

rpickett@rpickett:~$ uname -a
Linux rpickett 2.6.31-22-generic #65-Ubuntu SMP Thu Sep 16 15:48:58 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

rpickett@rpickett:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=karmic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 9.10"

Thanks!