Ring tones, songs and memory loops

While visiting with family yesterday, we got to talking about cell phone 'songs' and my sister-in-law allowed as how she finally set hers to play 'Stars and Stripes Forever' because she kept thinking she was hearing the radio when her cell phone rang with a more conventional tone. She figured she wouldn't make that mistake with 'Stars and Stripes' because you aren't very likely to hear that on the radio - nor are you likely to mistake someone else's phone ring for your own. Good thinking.

But today, in a public space, I heard a cell phone ring, several different times, playing 'Stars and Stripes' - and it wasn't hers, although I had to look around for the source because I thought it surely would be! So much for exclusivity.

Anyway, that made me think that what was really needed was unfamiliar and unmelodic tones - because I always manage to get a song 'stuck' in my head. Frankly, 'Stars and Stripes' playing as a background process in my brain all afternoon hasn't been pleasant.

How is it that I can get stuck on something like that? I never seem to hang up on a lovely melody - just things like the theme song to 'Green Acres' or 'It's a Small World After All.' And it can run that as a loop for days on end. No amount of concentration on 'The Blue Danube" or the 'Alaska State Song' ("Eight stars of gold on a field of blue, Alaska's flag, may it mean to you...",) or any other obscure piece that I am not likely to hear in public, will knock out some really dumb songs from my brain. The more insipid, the longer it stays.

So now it is 'Stars and Stripes.' I wonder how long I'll be stuck with it?