well, i'm done for the day and what did i find? this was pretty exhaustive on my googling, i must add.

1) exactly one space that is a little bit more than i want to pay, but is also substantially better than this space. non smoking. up a few floors, to get some fresh air. a little closer to the tunnel. adt. a tub, so i can shave. etc. i'll need to close the deal, but i would move to this place if i could - and especially if i can shave a  few dollars off. i'm waiting for a response from an ad without a phone number.

2) exactly one space that is a little bit cheaper than i'm paying here, and is comparable in terms of size, although it is one bedroom rather than two. depending on layout, that might even be better. i tried to call three numbers and am not convinced anyone of them are correct. this place may be smoky. i'd have to think about it.

3) exactly one space that seems like a lateral movement - but this may also include smoke issues. i'll have to look at this, but i'd probably turn it down.

4) several ads that were about fifty dollars out of my price range, and that i'd have to try and low ball.

if the first one doesn't work out, i can't state with certainty that something else will come up before it's time to stall via appeal. i'm just hoping the review body solves that problem the easy way.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

here's a bit of a sneaky trick.

i'm paying $670 all inclusive. that will go up to $680 in april. i'm looking for apartments under $700 all inclusive because, you know - if it's a good fit, right?

but i forgot about those ontario electricity rebates, which are going to come in at $45. and, this is important given the dollar amounts i have to play with.

if i see something for $700 + hydro, my mind is converting that to $750+. but, with the rebate, that should come out in the wash.

if i'm paying for electricity, i basically won't use it except at off peak hours. i'd rather not think about it, of course. but, my calculations suggest to me that i shouldn't use much more than $50/month - and may very well use less on some months. will they send me the difference? could i make money from this? these rebates really seem to be handouts for whiners that can't turn their a/c off. and, i don't want an a/c on at all. but, i'll take another $50/month one way or another.

if i can low ball a few of these and hope the landlord just wants a steady tenant, they're possibilities. we'll find out.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm going to spend the morning looking at listings and maybe make some calls around noon, if i find something.

but, the easy restatement of the logic is simply as follows:

1) can i find somewhere better? then, i'll take it.
2) if i can't find somewhere better, i'm hardly going to move to somewhere worse, so i'll appeal.

i do need to acknowledge that i am looking, though. that's a difference. it could take months to find something, but i am intending to eventually leave.

all of this other stuff is stalling, really.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

if i piss you off, it's because you're a conservative.

...because i'm the exact opposite of conservatism. and, i get it: i'm not naive about it. i'm fully aware that i'm the antithesis of any concept of conservative thought. i was even walking around a few years ago defining myself as an 'anti-conservative'.

i know my enemies, and my enemies are conservatives. actual conservatives. burkeans. traditionalists. religionists. monarchists. these are the people i have spent my life in conflict with, and will spend the rest of my life in continued conflict with.

even if you're a little centrist or even call yourself a liberal, this is what gets you about me: it's my disdain for anything resembling traditional thinking, my total rejection of the entire conservative rubric. you just might not realize it. yet. but maybe you should.

the flip side of this is that if you find yourself in agreement with me it's because you're actually on the libertarian side of socialism. i'm a liberal and i'm a socialist - and am therefore an anarchist. it could be either of them that's getting you nodding. but, you could be just as confused about this, too. you might call yourself something else. but, if you look at this carefully, you should see that if you agree with me at all, then you must be on the left.

i get that the left has moved right and become a fake left. but, the right hasn't moved left to compensate. it's pretended to sometimes, maybe, perhaps even signalled it's actually doing it, but we don't have any substantive outcomes, yet. we haven't switched spots. the vacuum on the left hasn't created a spot on the right. we've just seen the left collapse.

but, i'm not confused about this, even if you are.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i mean, it's typical of this government, right?

they have serious indigenous funding issues in front of them. the united nations is starting to really get on their ass on this. our own courts are getting pissed off. and, the threat of unrest is getting to the point of substantial.

so, their policy is to slash the funding across the board even more, and then put an indigenous person on the supreme court as some kind of empty show of symbolism. you can have your first indian justice, kids!

just don't look at the budget. over there! a squirrel...

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i don't like the idea of putting a law professor on the supreme court.

i've been over this before: the way you fix this is that you try and fix the balance at the lower levels, and then you promote based on whatever you want. when you're promoting a supreme court judge, it's less about qualifications (they all have the same qualifications) and more about disqualifications. but, you have to give everybody the same chance to fuck up.

the worst thing that could happen for advocates of minorities is to put in a candidate that hasn't been vetted, and then watch them fail - and that's what is bound to happen with any candidate that hasn't been vetted.

canada's judicial system is really unusually tight. it's one of the things this country really does right. and, this hokey neo-liberal american kind of identity politics type of thinking shouldn't be being serious contemplated.

we don't need to make our system more like theirs. they need to make their system more like ours.

but, are there representation issues? it's a complex problem, because you can't just pluck people out. it's a feedback loop: the less opportunities, the less representation. but, the political optics of the situation aside (and if they think voters  are going to even care, they're wrong - you do this for justice, not for votes; you do it for justice, or you don't do it), keep in mind that indigenous people spend more time in lower courts than they do at the supreme court, which is expensive to get to. the indigenous issues at the supreme court are going to be a lot broader - treaty rights, pipeline projects, that kind of thing. this government is likely to think that a "government indian" on the court will appease opposition to resource extraction (again: dream on.), but that's not the issue that the press tosses around. the issue you see in the press has to do with incarceration. how, exactly, does putting a law prof on the supreme court address an issue that exists at the lower levels?

it doesn't. it's politics. and, it's bad politics.

the real solutions lie in addressing the funding problems that this government won't address.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2017/10/23/justin-trudeau-should-name-an-indigenous-justice-to-the-supreme-court-editorial.html

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.