Yesterday I started using a new toothbrush, having noticed recently that the clever little blue bristles in my old one had started fading away. I'd been pretty impressed by this application of twelfth century dying techniques in the modern era, but as it turns out such innovation is really just the beginning of where our toothbrushes are going.

My new one is definitely Space Age: bristles in three different directions, as many colours (I'm hoping it's still the blue whose fading will tell me to buy a new one), and sleek, curved and sensual, like a sex toy for your mouth. Erm ... like a sex toy. I think back to the toothbrushes I had when I was a child, and feel sorry for their simplicity, their boring tightly-packed bristles, their sheer prosaic utility. If right now even our most humdrum hygiene equipment is becoming exciting to look at, who knows what the future holds? Shaving mirrors with built in stock tickers, soap dispensers connected to the Internet so they can order refills automatically, perhaps even aerosol deodorant that doesn't freeze your skin - truly the world of Fast Moving Consumer Goods has never been more interesting.

However it's not just the toothbrush itself that has become advanced. The packaging too has progressed from the simple bits of cardboard I am used to. It's possible that there is cardboard in there somewhere, under the layers of plastic, glue, and something unidentifiable that looks cool and shiny, but is almost impossible to get into. Perhaps the real future, thanks to a conspiracy at OralB, is that only those who already have very strong teeth will be able to use toothbrushes.

I said that yesterday I started using a new toothbrush; this is a lie. By the time I'd fought my way through its container, it was gone twelve, and I'd almost resorted to a hacksaw.

I can't hope to rival James' entry for sheer bile, but a question has been bubbling to the surface here at the Uncertainty Division, namely how to deal with our cumbersome name.

I once knew a London-based music outfit (with hestitation I'll call them a band) called Noise Union who, after some consideration and a few gigs at places like The Marquee, dropped the first word to make themselves simply 'Union'. By analogy, some people try to call us simply The Division which, while making sense (being shorter, and taken directly from our name), makes me think of annoying German industrial groups (probably musical, definitely involving metal).

There are some other options, none of which are particularly nice:

• UD - looks nice as a logo, completely useless as a name, as you can't pronounce it without sounding like a caveman
• The Div - makes me think we're in some weird gang
• Improbable People - not strictly an abbreviation, but I thought I'd mention it because we've been called it in the past

If only we'd gone with our original name, Old Man Harris' Card Shop, we could call ourselves, simply, Card shop - although that smacks altogether too much of Spontaneity Shop for my liking. Dang, this naming thing is difficult.

Anyway, let the suggestions roll in.

I was trying to improvise some beat poetry as I was out walking, but all I managed to come up with (beyond an idea that Tony Blair, Dorian Gray-like, has Cherie age in his place) was the following:

"A girl with a star in her eye;
Her ninja boyfriend clearly doesn't like her very much at all."

Apparently, this sort of thing would never have happened at the White House.

So said a senior figure in the Bush security cabal, quoted on the front page of one of the newspapers this morning - but damn me if I can't figure out which one now I come to write it up. Anyway, the point is that they are wrong, wrong, wrong. And someone who is so stunningly arrogant they think they can get away with a lie like that - or is so stunningly stupid they don't think to check their facts before opening their mouth - seriously thought they'd be allowed to deploy miniguns in London? As in the things you stick on tanks to kill people? Oh, I see, it's the nice miniguns, which merely protect presidents from the dangers of people who don't agree with them. I feel much better.

Did I read this morning that on Thursday, George W Bush will be sitting down to a nosh-up 'overseen' by Nigella Lawson? I'm not sure what disturbs me more, that a TV chef gets to meet the executive leader of the United States of America ... or that Nigel Lawson's daughter has to decide whether to poison him or not.

On a related note, were I one of the fourteen thousand police officers who are being used to guard against grandmothers during Bush's visit, I'd be sorely tempted to roll into work, look over my assignment, and then walk out again with the words "let the fuckers get him". Perhaps they could all transfer to Cambridgeshire Constabulary and help find out who keeps nicking our bikes.

I'm currently listening to Beethoven symphonies, and I keep on being distracted by very small melodic phrases which I'm sure are the main themes of various blockbuster films. Unless I'm very mistaken, Herr Beethoven didn't actually work for Warner during his lifetime, which means that either people are going around blatently ripping them off, or I'm mistaken.

The latter I'd be prepared to accept - the phrases that trigger my memory flash past pretty quickly, to be replaced by more recognisable Beethovian fare.

Am I perhaps just now coming to realise a huge fraud of which everyone else is already aware? Is perhaps all film music ripped off Beethoven? Can I hear the strains of a well-known quartet in Lord Of The Rings? His late piano sonatas in Schindler's List? Because that last riffle at the end of symphony number five is sure as bloody hell in Star Wars ...

I've had a couple of dreams recently featuring Stewart Lee. But not the real Stewart Lee - instead some paragon, with giant blond hair, a huge imposing air about him, and an idea for a TV series he's going to write with Matt Holness. Depending on the dream, I am invited either to go round sometime (which my short-term memory immediately records as 'tomorrow', but is actually 'tonight') to hash out some ideas with them, or to a party to celebrate what he's currently doing, which comes across as another TV show while actually being a group of people in a pub. I never make it to either.

Strangely, although it's definitely Stewart Lee and Matt Holness in the dream, neither looks anything like they do in real life, making me wonder if it's actually all an extended experiment by the government, or possibly a very strange joke by unscrupulous friends.

I wake confused, and unrefreshed. There must be a way of ridding my head of unwanted comedians.

Apparently we were featured last night on (of all things) 'Airport', ITV's reality TV show. It seems that some footage of us from the Royal Mile this summer was used in the 'this is Edinburgh' section at the beginning. Presumably there weren't people wandering round airports subjecting innocent members of the public to bizarre psychoanalysis in the hope that something interesting might pop out. Although we live in an age of authoritarian security, so maybe there were.

If anyone happens to have the clip on tape - or, better yet, if anyone knows if we can get the raw footage from ITV somehow - then obviously we'd be vastly grateful, before descending into a fug of self-admiration. Can we perhaps just pay our ten pounds and get the footage under the Data Protection Act?