YouTuber Walking Bass Piano Man is a master of the jazz piano, as demonstrated by numerous jazz renditions of popular songs, including the works of Bon Jovi, Ben E. King, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

In this video, they take the iconic opening theme to Sesame Street and play it over and over again, incrementally jazzing it up. Starting at level 1, it's not that different from what you'd see on television. But by the time that Walking Bass Piano Man gets to level 8, it's a jumping melody that flies across the keyboard faster than it seems two hands can manage.

-via Laughing Squid

Being a civilized, sensible, and well-informed people, the Japanese have an appreciation for Texas. Twitter user @chairmanwon, a hobbyist gunsmith from Texas, discovered this on his ongoing journey through Japan.

He reports that his hosts, upon learning that @chairmanwon and his wife were Texans, took them to a Texas-themed bar. Everyone there dresses like Texans (or how they imagine that we dress) and the bar itself looks like a Texan honky-tonk.

Parents lose sight of their child at the airport pic.twitter.com/1phO6vwbma

— Crazy Clips (@crazyclipsonly) November 23, 2023

Airport security requirements can be rather strict. There are some items that you may keep as carry-on luggage and take with you into the cabin. Other items must be checked and travel in a plane's baggage compartment.

But a child is not one of them. You may (and should) keep your toddler with you in the cabin, even though other passengers may wish otherwise.

Business Insider reports that a little boy climbed onto the baggage conveyor belt system at an airport in Santiago, Chile. He appears to have enjoyed the experience, but baggage handlers nonetheless shut down his ride and returned him to his parents.

Does your family have turkey for Thanksgiving? Some families do. I mean, to each his own, I guess. But I agree with Kimberly Darling of Chicago who prefers to serve her family alligator.

She's one of many Thanksgiving celebrants described in an article published in The Wall Street Journal (sorry, it's paywalled) who serve exotic meats to their families on Thanksgiving. S. Ottomanelli & Sons, a butcher shop in New York City, reports that about 25% of its orders for the feast are for exotic meats, which include alligator, kangaroo, python, and rattlesnake.

Other alligator meat producers inform the Journal that they see similar upticks in orders during the holiday seasons. It's a time to eat hearty and impress guests, so alligator suits them.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: S. Ottomanelli & Sons

The Krave It Pizza and Sandwich Joint has several locations in New York City, which is helpful for New Yorkers who are looking for a Thanksgiving Day feast to eat without cooking it themselves. Krave It has become famous for its specialty pizzas, which include a cheeseburger pizza, a fried Oreo pizza, a pickle pizza, and Korean corn pizza.

But since it's Thanksgiving, we should eat a traditional Thanksgiving meal on a pizza crust, which Krave It helpfully provides. The Thanksgiving pizza has turkey, sweet potatoes with roasted marshmallows, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and gravy. There's a complete meal in every slice.

-via First We Feast

Singing HBD in Vulcan. Send a singing-gram from T’Lyn 🖖🎂 ! https://t.co/toc0rHWGQ5 pic.twitter.com/kjZUJAhd4v

— Gabrielle Ruiz (@gabrielleruiz) November 20, 2023

Gabrielle Ruiz is the voice actress who plays T'Lyn on the Star Trek comedy show Lower Decks. She's available for appearances on Cameo, an online celebrity video message service. For one happy Trekkie, she sang the "Happy Birthday" song in T'Lyn's Vulcan language.

Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki tells us that the Vulcan language isn't quite as developed and formalized as the Klingon language (in which you can also listen to "Happy Birthday"), but fans and linguists have worked on it since the 1960s. It is a most logical language with a beautiful script that made many appearances on the Enterprise series.

Enjoy your upcoming Thanksgiving Day feast. Load up your plate with plenty of seconds and thirds. But, the next day, plumbers across the United States will deal with the consequences of your satiety. UPI reports that the Roto-Rooter plumbing company refers to the Friday after Thanksgiving as "Brown Friday." Plumbers usually receive 50% more service calls that day compared to the average Friday.

Yes, toilets are put to the test on that day. But so are sinks and garbage disposals, as they strain to process more content, and dining visitors push down traditional Thanksgiving foods, such as poultry skins and potato peels, that are more likely to cause clogs. Roto-Rooter advises wiping down greasy pots before washing them and not shoving clog-inducing foods through garbage disposals.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Rick

Several months ago, residents of a neighborhood in Chevy Chase, Maryland discovered that an old fashioned pay phone had appeared on a quiet residential street. But the classic Bell design was labeled "Jokes". The instructions said that users should push different numbers for different types of jokes, such as #1 for a knock-knock joke. And it was free! There was no need to drop in a quarter.

The Washingtonian reports that resident Don Rutlege, who lives across the street from the phone, put it up. He purchased the old phone online and refurbished it into a joke-telling machine. A microcomputer inside connects to his home wifi network. Rutlege himself responds and provided the requested joke.

-via Atlas Obscura

While attending the Constitutional Convention in July of 1787, George Washington found the brutal summer heat unbearable and decided to purchase a "fan chair". This photo shows one owned by the museum collections of Mount Vernon, but is likely not the specific design owned by Washington.

It does, though, show the ingenuity of inventors before the age of air conditioning. John Cram, a craftsman in Philadelphia, designed this chair in 1786. Tapping one's feet on the pedals pulled the overhead fan back and forth.

-via Core77 | Photo: Mount Vernon

Twitter user @markvchase is a thriving YouTuber who focuses on film criticism. He had an early brush with movie fame in 2005 when, as a child, he took a family trip to Disney World in Florida.

His family used to joke that George Lucas was in the background of this photo, but now Mark is convinced that it actually happened. Lucas is wearing his iconic plaid shirt and jeans. It could be a cosplayer. But an online news story confirms that Lucas was in Disney World on the day of Mark's family trip. The press release shows him wearing what looks like the same outfit.

13th Century Tiktok Live Streamers Pregame a Night at the Tavern pic.twitter.com/42vpRsZnyC

— Sklumper (@InternetJumbo) November 7, 2023

This summer, geezers such as myself discovered the trend of people paying streamers to eat virtual foods and interact with them. Don't ask me to explain how it works. I'll just refer to this article in The Guardian for the rundown.

I really shouldn't be having an Old Man Yells at Cloud moment because streamers and the people who follow them have been doing this for literally centuries. Sketch comedy performers Sklumper demonstrate this in a recovered video file from the Middle Ages. These two middling lords are about to head to the tavern and are pregaming (i.e. getting drunk) with their subscribers. It fortunately ends before Lady Anne gets too racy with her content.

John Wyatt Greenlee is known online as the Surprised Eel Historian because he holds a doctoral degree in medieval European history who specializes in discovering surprisingly novel uses of eels in the Middle Ages.

In modern times, we mostly load eels into our hovercrafts. But in medieval England, eels were a staple food that were eaten so prolifically that people often paid their rents in eels.

Police in Akron, Ohio responded to a report of a car theft at a wrecking yard. The suspect was inside a Nissan SUV but unable to escape because an employee of the yard had used a heavy forklift to pick the car high up into the air. It was only after police arrived and surrounded the scene that the operator lowered the car to the ground so that police could make the arrest.

It appears that all of the law enforcement professionals involved enjoyed this arrest. Fox News quotes the 911 dispatcher as saying "Wonderful, this is the greatest thing I've ever heard. We, we will get somebody out to you."

-via Dave Barry

If I had known this was a sport when I was younger, I'd be a world champion by now.

Spoon & Tamago informs us that there was a "spacing out" competition in Tokyo. For an hour and a half, competitors lay still and did nothing at all--or as close to nothing as they could manage--while not falling asleep.

Officials monitored their heart rates and disqualified anyone who talked or slept during the contest. Athletes who wore impressive costumes and kept empty facial expressions received extra points.

The winners were a team who evidently knew how to work together to accomplish as little as possible.

-via Super Punch | Photo: Sankei

The Big Five model of human personality scores people along spectra of conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion. Recently, researchers Kätlin Anni, Uku Vainik, and René Mõttus at the University of Tartu in Finland, surveyed people in 263 different occupations to assess their personalities using the Big Five model. Their full paper is available online.

I would like to note that, in my completely non-professional understanding, neuroticisim is not inherently bad. To have a touch of neuroticism--that is, to have some negative emotions--is to be realistic. It's unhealthy to be on the extreme ends of the spectra of any of these five personality traits and some environments, such as professions are optimal or suboptimal for particular personalities.

I was delighted to see that my own profession--librarianship--appears in the survey on p. 63. Librarians are among the least conscientious professions.

-via David Thompson