Hi beardedwalrus, I hope this helps. If you can't log into your system at all then you need to hold down shift when you start the computer to access the grub menu and then 'e' to edit the default entry.

Find the line recordfail=1 and comment out that line and the line after it which should start "if [ -n ${have_grubenv} ]".Then hit Control + x to boot.

Once you've got into your system open up a terminal and edit the file /etc/grub.d/10_linux, you'll need superuser priviledges so for instance if you wanted to edit it with vim you would run: -

sudo vim /etc/grub.d/10_linux

Once again, find the line recordfail = 1 and comment out that line and the line after. Save the file and quit the editor.

Now run

sudo update-grub

The last command will regenerate /boot/grub/grub.cfg and your system should boot normally.

For more information you should try looking at: -
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1195275 - there is specific instructions for dealing with this bug there although no information about what's causing it.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2