Mutatis Mutandis;

California Jones had worked well past lunch. He knew that, like (going from indications) Hollywood script writing, there was only so far a man could go on unsolicited efforts. Thereafter solicitation was in order.

The Latin for solicit was hard to say good things about - circumvent seemed to be the best transliteration. He could understand Solicitors circumventing, and solicitation was circumventing decorum, but what of charitable door-to-door solicitations? Oh well, they were pretty well hated too, so he would avoid THAT like the plague.

He dug out yet another unsolicited effort and polished for a time.

There was a man in Russia, named Rasputin, who studied very deeply and discovered the answer to all of Russia's problems. He was a man of letters, and familiar with what the French called 'le chiffre indechiffrable,' back then.

He had a close working relationship with the royal family, but he wanted to be certain before he unleashed the fruits of his labors on the entire nation of Russia. His wisdom led him to consult a holy man named Makariy, in far away Verkhoturye; he did not want anyone to misuse the information so he coded it.

His messenger was intercepted by spies of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church who killed the messenger and hid the message. After Rasputin's death, Prince Yusipov's men were able "by dint of much effort," to obtain the solution of the cryptogram. They were convinced of Rasputin's hidden wisdom and brought the ground breaking results to the Prince. Because they did not want the Prince to know who had written it, they told him they had found the cryptogram in his mother's effects, and obtained the password by psychic telepathy.

The Prince looked at the encrypted source and compared it with the result, and immediately declared it to be "AN AMERICAN TRAP!" to all and sundry... and that is why all Americans, when they think the KGB has intercepted their letters, laugh and say...

'poor bastards!'

Hmmm... he regarded the product critically. Was it truly finished?

Charlie knew that most people (his teachers not excepted,) relied upon individuals failing the reflexive test of all imperatives. The paradox of self-reference (Asimov had been clear enough about THAT one,) did not exempt one, it was simply a pitfall. The case that he honestly worried about was even more troublesome: Recursive manifestations of reflexive imperatives.

He circled his idea warily, wondering IF he would get stuck in a loop from THIS one. Take a safe case and apply IT _first_, he told himself. Was _Satan_ a 'poor bastard?' He HAD a message straight from God, unencrypted. True, he had looked at it and declared it to be a trap, but who was his authoritative audience? Either the worst person in the Universe was not a 'poor bastard,' OR (he paused...) the 'poor bastards,' were not the worst people in the Universe.

He investigated further. If a Satan_IST looked at the same message, he'd declare it trap city, like steam escaping from a cooking Lobster shell, and take it straight to Satan for review. Uh-uh... in the JOKE, he could clearly see the Prince was the ruler, and HE had been the one to declare a trap. If a Satan_ist called "trap!" and yet was not the ruler...

How did the saying go... "There is truth in humor, but not humor in truth?" It parsed grammatically, and was not an obvious paradox, but was meaning encapsulated? It appeared to be a syllogistic statement of contrapositive, but the lingual "in," made even an Euler diagram challenging. Challenging? Try Impossible!

It was _funny_ AND it was true; in _that_ order!