...And Justice For All was one of the first compact discs we owned. My sister's boyfriend at the time was a California transplant. Besides handing me down his "old" snowboard--which was possibly the east coast's first snowboard, not including "Snurfer"--he gifted my sister a bunch of little foreign discs that we had no way of playing. Slick Rick, the Pump Up the Volume Soundtrack, NWA...and Metallica's last underground hurrah, before Bob Rock told Lars to completely overdo those cymbal crashes and James to go ahead and let his "feelings" out, no gun-to-head necessary when you've got the lure of a pop star bank account.

For some reason, an odd thought I had at the time, two decades ago, stuck with me. "This song," I decided, referring to "Shortest Straw," "would be perfect to jog to." Now called "running," jogging was something I'd never do willingly at the time, only when a stubborn old gym teacher or baseball coach would force me to as he stood motionless with clipboard. But still, I knew that song would be perfect for methodically stomping pavement.

For Christmas, which we atheists like to call "More Stuff? Day," I got Kim a treadmill. I dabble in running these days, and while I don't mind doing it outside, Kim prefers a more controlled workout. So after surprising myself by successfully surprising her (have you ever tried to hide a treadmill?) on MS?D morning, I got that thing--and Kim and me--up and running. Twenty years after making my claim, I threw on Metallica's ...And Justice For All, set it to "Shortest Straw," and hit the artificial road.

And I was right.

After wearing out that cd--in these final days of cds, and yes, it's the same copy all these years later--I decided I needed new running music. I figured the Dead Kennedys a good choice, and I was right again. That album with their two biggest, well, their only two songs that your average Josephine would have any chance of knowing, "Holiday In Cambodia" and "California Uber Alles."

So for the last few runs, I've been listening to the great Jello Biafra singing about the horrors of what life would be like under a certain president named Brown.

Senator Brown isn't going to turn you into a drawstring lamp. He won't even send the suede-denim secret police to come for your uncool niece. In fact, today's election wasn't even about Brown or Coakley. But with the Republican taking the seat, this country is headed back in the wrong direction, and I think it's all about race. How do you get a bunch of racist yahoos to vote? You don't tell 'em a black guy's running, you tell 'em a black guy's already in.

Am I oversimplifying? Maybe, but you can't tell me it's not a factor. People can yell and scream about how much they'd prefer to have giant corporations in charge of their health care or how much they want the government to stop taking the money they don't have and the guns they do, but you don't have to read their signs too carefully to realize they mainly want "the opposite of what the black guy wants."

So what do we have here? First, a dead Kennedy. Then, a short straw. And in the end, hopefully justice for all. See what I did there?