To prove that someone actually blogs about even nerdier stuff than me, I direct you to the Daily Transcript to learn about the endoplasmic reticulum and how it deals with poorly constructed proteins. My only point of reference in all of this basic cell biology is that I care about eIF2alpha kinases because they provide an interesting way to upregulate some proteins in the face of a global decrease in translation. I have a pet theory that the sort of stimulation that leads to synaptic plasticity is a form of cellular stress that could locally activate some of these same processes. I recommend following his links to the introductory material. There are a lot of abbreviations to get down.