Weighty versus trivial

I'm feeling tired of writing and thinking about serious things, such as the nature of the universe, and what is science, and the general ignorance of humans. I am also wishing that I could purge my brain of information about celebrity marriages and other trivia. I am embarassed that I know anything about Demi and Ashton or Brad and whoever - I didn't seek to know these things, they were thrust upon me by media-saturated culture and I couldn't avoid them!

It's like how the jingles for matress stores are taking up valuable real estate in my brain that could be - should be - being used for better things. I could sing you at least three matress commercials right now, but I have no idea who the president of Spain is, for example.

Shit, now I have a matress song in my head.

Apparently, the concept of Halle Berry is stored in a single neuron that fires when a subject is shown a picture of the actress, even if she is dressed as Catwoman. I am sort of annoyed that Halle Berry, even though she's a fine actress, gets a whole neuron, whereas I often can't remember people I've met in the past year. I don't want to be giving random celebrities whole neurons! I don't want "Jennifer Aniston" to be a web of mental associations indelibly encoded in my brain.

Here, this is cool and in no way serious, unless you start thinking about a) the mechanisms of visual perception or b) the pervasiveness of advertising.