Sometimes the most immediate problems of my life have nothing to do with what comes on the nightly news, the headlines in the newspapers, or the weekend totals of all the early summer movies. They are just the unforeseen personal dilemmas that pop into are daily lives, and right now, the roof is leaking in my front room.

It is not always in the same place or with the same intensity, but almost every time it rains, some water trickles from the ceiling. I tell my landlord, who promptly comes over and patches this part of the roof and that. It usually fixes the problem momentarily and makes the water work harder to find its way through the ceiling, but the roof is never really fixed. Just patched up in hopes of being a cheaper solution.

I understand why my landlord is trying the quick fix method to the problem. He said it would cost $1600 to re-roof my rental house, and is trying everything to avoid a full overhaul. It's a lot cheaper to patch it up with his tub of sticky tar glue. I would probably do the same thing if it was my rental house.

In fact, I think most people attempt quick fix ideas instead of the obvious painful solutions.

**Warning!! Extrapolation Below!!**

Take the Kosovo Peace Initiative. If NATO really wanted the war over and done with, they should send in ground troops and march into Belgrade. But allied forces are expensive, and it's much less painful on our psyche to just keep dropping bombs from the sky than see dead soldiers. Just keep patching the problem, and maybe water will stop leaking. We can always bomb again tomorrow.

Then, there's the kids in school with guns. We could just punish everyone and make getting access to guns very difficult. Not just difficult for children, but everyone. If it's easy for adults to do something, it's not that much harder for kids to do the same thing. How did all of the kids get in this movie? I thought it was Rated R.

But Congress will not comply with the huge overhaul for gun control. That's too extreme. Millions of gun owners would have tormented lives. Instead, they have decided to bicker whether background checks should mandatory at gun shows. Problem patched up and it may not rain for weeks.

Studies show that states with high graduation rates have the lowest number of citizens in their jails. But instead of trying to rip up the roof of the education system and invest money in our teachers and facilities, it would be easier to patch the problem with a new jail or two. Let the lotteries and casinos pay for public education. Trickle down economics, and we have enough bowls to catch the water dripping anyway.

It has always been much easier to ease the symptoms of a problems than cure the disease. That's why I don't get on my landlord's case about the roof. He's trying to fix the problem. He actually comes over, accesses the situation, tries to stop the leaking with the least amount of funds, and tells me to call him if the problem returns.

So far, the problem keeps returning, and each time it does, he mentions re-roofing. Eventually, he will have to give in. He will have to blow the money and solve his tenants complaints. It's all a question of how long he waits before he does it. How many bombs do we drop? How many people do we shoot? How many jails do we build? How long? How many? How much?

Maybe the patching will work next time. Maybe we can avoid the obvious expensive choices. Maybe it will be all right if we keep doing what we're doing. Maybe it won't rain for a while.

Chris Jungle acknowledges that the roof falling in on him would count as a sign of the apocalypse.