Cataphasis (kat-af’-a-sis): A kind of paralipsis in which one explicitly affirms the negative qualities that one then passes over.
Joey: Your interior decorating skills have made your home look like a nouveaux rest stop. The only thing missing are the urinals and the antiseptic smell. But I don’t have the time to rant and rave about your decor. Let’s take a swim in your pool.
What the hell is that in your pool? What? A friggin’ manatee!
Barbara: I got it at the pool supply store Swim! for $600. I licks the algae off the side of the pool and make chirping sound when intruders enter the yard. Last week we caught a feral poodle that had to be put down by animal control. He was wearing a collar that said Pierre on it.
Joey: But the manatee takes up half the pool! And the manatee poop sort of disgusting. It looks like floating potatoes.
Barbara: That’s true. I hired Wes from Swim! To keep things clean and keep me focused with poolside exercises. He’s a genius. My favorite is “put the ice cream in the cone.” I sit on a traffic cone while he spins me around.
Joey: That’s disgusting. I think Wes has made you into some kind of pervert.
Barbara: That may be true but his “Perversion” has made me into a more relaxed, open and fearless person. I can handle just about anything. With Wes behind me I don’t feel pushed or shoved. Rather, I feel like a pony delivering mail on the the Pony Express. I surprise my neighbors plucking their mail from their mailboxes and delivering it to their doors in my mouth with a celebratory whinny. Wes comes along to explain. I don’t know what he says because he goes in my neighbors’ houses and spends about an hour with women, and five minutes if it is only a men are home. Anyway, as you can see it’s all above board.
Joey: I don’t know what hoard you’re talking about. Pallet board? I thought your home decor was a horror. But it is eclipsed by your Wes escapades. I’m guessing he was recently released from someplace— like maybe a mental facility.
Barbara: Yes! He recently got out of “Left-Handed Studies Institute—about five years ago. They study left-handed people for criminal tendencies. Wes was left-handed and took pleasure in choking chickens with it when he was a boy. After choking 226 chickens his mother sent him to the Left-Handed Studies Institute, where he lived for thirty-two years being presented with a chicken every day until he lost interest in them and took up an interest in marine biology and obtained a degree from UC Santa Cruz. Hence, his interest in pool maintenance. Alice (my manatee) was his senior project at Santa Cruz.
So, don’t worry about Wes. He’s on the up and up.
Joey: Up what? It is clear to me that he’s a nutcase. Some day he’s going to confuse you with a giant leghorn and send you to the big nesting box in the sky. I say, tell him to take a hike. Buy him a plane ticket if you have to.
Barbara: Don’t be silly Joey. We’re getting married and he’s moving in with me. The only difficulty is that he insists that my manatee come to the wedding as a bridesmaid. We’re working it out.
Joey: You better work it out or things might get dicey.
POSTSCRIPT
The first responders found Alice dressed as a bridesmaid, lying on top of Barbara, suffocating her. Wes was nowhere to be found, but he left a note that was gibberish: “wa ooh, wa ohh gropple we Ho.” It was determined that it was written in porpoise, but in a dialect nobody understood.
Joey sent flowers.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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