January 19, 2025Insomnia Chronicles XXVIErin Murphy

The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. Some of my friends are trying Dry January. Dryuary. Others are sober curious. There’s a mock cocktail called a Phony Negroni. It’s made with non-alcoholic gin. Phony Negroni. Phony baloney. When I was eight, my brother and I were walking by a house in our neighborhood when suddenly a slab of baloney sailed through the air and stuck to a chain link fence. There were no people or animals in sight. Such a funny word, baloney. What’s Biden’s favorite saying? Malarkey. So hokey. But then, even the word hokey is hokey. Monday we’ll inaugurate a felon the same day we celebrate Martin Luther King. Felonious Trump. For years we’d pass the brick rancher and say There’s the baloney house the way you might observe that it’s raining or snowing. We humans can normalize anything.