Tommy Edison has been blind since birth. He has, literally, no idea what the visual world is like — the things we take for granted, such as the ability to read this sentence, he has no experience with.

Which is what makes his YouTube channel incredible. On the the Tommy Edison Experience, he explains blind living for sighted people with videos such as "Blind Cooking," "How a Blind Person Uses Paper Money" and "Shit Sighted People Say to Blind People." Forget the fact that he's also known as the Blind Film Critic.

But my favorite video of his, at this very moment, is "Describing Colors to Blind People," where he describes that there's a "whole part of language that doesn't mean anything to [him]." It blows my mind, really making me reconsider the figurative language I use — and the fact that I've spent too much damn time trying to decide whether or not I want the blue wireless mouse, or the red. Check it out below.

Time is running out to make a deal to avert the dreaded "fiscal cliff" by the year's end. (We want to take a moment to emphasize that the fiscal cliff is a terrible metaphor that has way too many people freaked out.)

Congressman Raul Grijalva does not like the details of the latest proposals coming out of the talks between President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner. (And, as it turns out, Boehner may not like them, either, even though he's the one negotiating.)

Anyway, here's Grijalva's statement today:

Federal law has always prohibited Social Security from contributing to the deficit. Any talk of shrinking the program to ‘save money’ is flawed from the start because Social Security is not part of the national budget in the same way as military spending—it’s paid for through a dedicated payroll tax separate from general budgeting.

Some have suggested that Social Security benefits should be based on a chained Consumer Price Index (CPI), which assumes that when the price of one item rises, people buy something else—no matter how popular or necessary that original item might be. If this change goes into effect, Social Security benefits would stop reflecting the rising prices of popular goods.

The average Social Security recipient rakes in a whopping $13,000 a year. If we pass chained CPI, projected annual cuts for a typical retiree would be about $560 a year by age 75, $984 a year by age 85 and $1,400 a year by age 95.

The less money our Social Security recipients—including 9 million veterans—are able to spend, the less money goes to the businesses that create jobs. Chained CPI makes life harder for millions of retirees, weakens Social Security and doesn’t reduce the deficit by a penny. It’s a Beltway fig leaf that I will never support, and I call on my colleagues to make their feelings known as soon as possible before this becomes yet another piece of conventional wisdom that makes things worse.

Lifting the cap on high earners paying into Social Security is a real fix that would make the program solvent indefinitely. If we want to talk about solutions, let’s talk about that, not inventing reasons to take money from American retirees.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Chait analyzes what the latest offer on the table means:

There is a cryptic sign up at 210 N. 4th Ave. for a new food store. The banner on the overhang simply reads “Deli-Grocery & Homemade Dinners To Go.” It also states it’s coming in January. Looking in the window the place was still empty and January is not too far off. If anyone has further information, let me know.

• P. Anninos
• Astronomers hope to watch as the black hole at the center of our Milky Way rips apart a mysterious cloud composed primarily of hydrogen gas sometime around July 2013. The image shows a computer simulation predicting how the cloud changes over time.

UA astronomy professor Feryal Ozel, who studies neutron stars and black holes, is in the midst of watching an enormous hydrogen cloud slide down the throat of a massive black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

Shelley Littin of the University Communications team tells us the plan:

The cloud is moving fast enough through space that Ozel and her colleagues predict it will create a shockwave in front of it when it approaches the black hole, like the supersonic boom heard when an airplane breaks the sound barrier, Ozel said. The shockwave should emit radiation observable through radio telescopes.

“Shortly after that we expect that the cloud is going to be basically wrenched apart,” Ozel said.

Astronomers can infer that the intense gravity of black holes absorbs material from objects that come too near, Ozel said, but normally aren’t able to see it happen in real time. The collision of the gas cloud with the black hole at the center of our own galaxy will give scientists a chance to learn about the environment of a black hole.

“It’s the first time we will be able to see a black hole having lunch,” Ozel said.

During a particularly slow moment today, incoming Tucson Weekly editor Dan Gibson and I spent far too much time and money attempting to obtain a present in our break room's vending machine, left by the enterprising folks who stock said machine.

It's a tale that includes counting change, disbelief in how much we spent, the horror of an object that got stuck in the machine (twice) and the use of a wire hangar to dislodge the item so we could collect our bounty. It's a project that took a good ten minutes and produced a fair amount of amusement.

In an effort to give this story some closure, and justify the expense to myself, I present the following image to TucsonWeekly.com readers for your approval:

• Dan Gibson
• We spent five bucks on all that?!

That's right. We spent somewhere in the neighborhood of five dollars for off-brand Lifesavers, lemon cookies, a lint brush, some candy canes, a nail file and Corn Nuts.

And the worst part? The chips at the top, which actually look like they're worth the effort if they were included, were the ones we purchased in an effort to obtain the package. Evidently, we imagined that the present held untold, life-changing riches within its wrapping paper—Powerball-esque life-changing! Or, y'know, some kind of gift card, at least.

The lesson? Ten minutes of amusement are generally worth about five dollars and a blog post.

Have a good evening, folks.

The Westboro Baptist Church. Surely you're familiar, correct? They're the terrible people who go around with signs that read "God Hates Fags" and protest funerals after tragedies and do generally do everything in their power to make sure that no one is ever happy around them.

Basically, they're like the worst trolls of the internet—similar to 4chan's /b/ message board, for those who get that reference—but they're blatantly awful in real life.

Well, there are now petitions circulating the internet thanks to hacktivist group Anonymous, who have recently made it their mission to ruin WBC. Their purpose? To get WBC's status as a tax-exempt religious organization investigated, and ultimately revoked. Take a look, from Kansas City's WDAF-TV:

Using its Twitter account, Anonymous asked its followers to sign a petition that would investigate the IRS tax-exempt status of the church. As stated on the White House website, the petition claims: “The Westboro Baptist Church is better-known for homophobic displays, suing people and picketing funerals than for providing Christian care to a community. Due to their harassment and politicking, their IRS tax-exempt status should be immediately investigated.”
A total of 16,062 signatures are needed before the White House will review the petition. As of noon on Monday, nearly 10,000 people had signed it.

Another petition aims at stripping Westboro of its “religious” affiliation and classifying it as a hate group. As stated in part on the White House website, Westboro’s “actions have been directed at many groups, including homosexuals, military, Jewish people and even other Christians. They pose a threat to the welfare and treatment of others and will not improve without some form of imposed regulation.”
Over 108,000 people have signed this petition, which surpasses the 25,000 needed for the White House to review it.

Now, as we've said before, internet petitions are generally worth less than the paper they're not printed on, but this is a movement I can get behind.

Whether or not this can actually get any traction, or whether or not it ends up being a Supreme Court case in the long run, is up in the air. But it's interesting seeing people finally take a stand against something that is considered universally abhorrent.

• Shutterstock
• This is probably not Oscar, but it made me laugh.

For the second year in a row (the dachshund racing fans among us may remember our discussion of the wiener race last year), the Old Pueblo is home to a wiener dog competing in a national championship race, sponsored by (who else?) Wienerschnitzel.

On Dec. 28 27, Tucson will be represented by a dachshund named Oscar and his owner, Tyson Rondeau. Oscar will be running in the Wiener Nationals, in San Diego, for pride, glory and $1,000 cash. Also, the winner will get a position of honor in the San Diego Big Bay Balloon parade, and will be brought out to be recognized at halftime of the Holiday Bowl. Pretty heavy stuff, for dogs that are longer than they are tall.

What does this mean for you, Tucson? Truth be told, not a whole lot, unless you happen to be the kind of person who really digs it when local folks are getting national coverage. Then you should be excited!!~

Seriously, very cool for Oscar and Tyson. Best of luck to you both; we're looking forward to your victory, in which we will shower you with hot dog bun crumbs. That's like a ticker-tape parade, right? It's almost like snow, at least.

• weinerdograces.com/
• None of these are probably Oscar, but this is closer.

Republicans who cast Arizona's official electoral votes for Mitt Romney descended into the birther conspiracy again today

AP reports:

The state Republican Party chairman and two other Electoral College members spoke up during the ceremony to voice doubts about Obama's eligibility as a native-born U.S. citizen.

"I'm disappointed that the other candidate, Barack Obama, has not been properly vetted as a legitimate candidate for president," said Don Ascoli, a party leader from Gila County.

"I hope our Congress will formally investigate the issue that has been brought to our attention and even investigated by our own sheriff, Joe Arpaio," he said.

Hawaii officials have certified that President Obama was born in that state.

State Republican party chairman Tom Morrissey also questioned the president's birth certificate.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, Congressman Raul Grijalva joins the chorus of voices calling for new restrictions on guns:

When a man kills twenty children and seven others for no reason other than his own demons, the immediate human response is the same anywhere: deep pain, grief, anger and frustration. In the United States, unfortunately, such a tragedy carries an added weight because it is not unique.

Last Friday will live in our collective memory, just as Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Tucson and the numerous other mass killings we have endured will live in our memory. We have become a nation overly acquainted with shock and grief.

That grief cannot be the end of our response. With millions of other Americans, I say today that we should stop making emotional room in our hearts for each year’s new round of public shootings and killing sprees. We should resolve to end them rather than accommodate them.

At some point, which I believe we long ago passed, the time comes to stop calling for ‘a national dialogue’ when one side is clearly uninterested in talking. Absolutism in defense of gun violence is no virtue, and we have been cowed by absolutists for too long. When we accept eight or nine thousand gun murders a year as the price of what some people think of as freedom, we have gone too far.

It takes necessary courage in these moments to admit that our laws are part of the problem and that no amount of emotional healing is going to prevent the next tragedy. The scandalous availability of highly lethal weapons to even the least qualified, least competent and most dangerous among us has gone on long enough. If pro-gun activists will not negotiate in good faith, it is time for the country to move on without them. Sitting on our hands and hoping for the best is no longer an option.

There are plenty of people who believe otherwise. I wonder how they would feel if it had been them at five years old.

More than one in six people are concerned that the world will end this week, on Dec. 21, according to a survey of concerns and regrets going into the coming apocalypse—or, failing that, 2013—by data backup service Backblaze.

This astounds me. Not that a data backup service would do a survey of things that stress people out (losing files on their computers, of course, was a leader in the concerns of those surveyed, concerning 74 percent of those surveyed), but that so many people are worried about the world ending next Friday.

I mean, using those statistics, there are at least two people that I've walked past in our building that may either stockpiling goods or have already begun plans to drink until the the moon crashes into the planet, or whatever.

From the press release accompanying these statistics:

“While this survey was commissioned as a bit tongue-in-cheek, at Backblaze we hear from people every day who feel as though their world is collapsing when they have lost precious files, photos and documents. We founded Backblaze because we recognized the importance of helping people have a ‘backup plan’ to ensure that every piece of data, no matter the size, is continuously, safely and securely backed up.

We had a surge of customers recently that we were able to help rebuild their digital life following loss and damage to their computers from Hurricane Sandy. This study demonstrates just how devastating losing files on one’s computer can be,” said Gleb Budman, CEO and co-founder of Backblaze.

When asked if the apocalypse were truly coming on this date, what regrets would people have, if any, 70% reported that they would have some regret. Not traveling more was cited most often by U.S. adults with nearly one-third (32%) reporting to have this regret, which was followed closely by those who regretted not spending more time with their families (30%). Nearly one in four people (23%) reported that they would regret not following their dreams and spending too much time worrying about money (22%). And one in four men (25%) would regret not having had more sex if the Mayan prediction proves true. Interestingly, only 10% of women surveyed would have the same regret.

So the takeaways here: Gleb (which is derived from an Old Norse name meaning "heir of god") is a badass name; a significant amount of the population appears to have missed stories such as this one from National Geographic; and there are going to be an awful lot of dudes taking out Craigslist ads for sex parties in the coming weeks.