Ugh!

Bah! Maggot in my apple. Still, as the old joke has it, better than finding half a maggot. So much for pesticides. What I was looking at there was probably a pesticide-resistant maggot. (Sadly, since I don't have a camera 'phone, I can't show it to you. ;^b)

The remaining half of my apple looked healthy, but, funnily enough, my appetite for eating it seemed to have gone away.

Life imitating _The Confusion_ (or possibly the other way around, for all I know)

There was one among [the crypto-Jews of Spain following the Expulsion in 1492] by the name of Don Fernando Aguilar, who was conductor of the royal orchestra in Barcelona. The days of Elul arrived; the days of judgment were approaching, and Don Fernando's soul yearned to hear the sound of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. His yearning was shared by many of his brethren.

What did he do?

He announced publicly that on such and such a day (the date of Rosh Hashanah), he would present a concert featuring instrumental musics of various peoples...

Many of the marranos (the forcibly converted Jews) came... to hear the sound of the shofar... and they did! Many varied compositions were played by the performers, among them also the shofar sounds: teki'ah, shvarim and tru'ah, in full keeping with the prescribed order of the mitzvah of shofar, under the very direction of Don Aguilar himself without any of the clergy aware of it.

It has been said: No one ever succeeded in confounding the Accuser through Shofar-sounds as did Don Aguilar. All the emissaries of the Accuser were present; the leading figures in the Hierarchy and the Inquisition—they all heard and saw, but knew nothing...

Eliyahu Kitov, The Book of our Heritage