I was laid up with food poisoning all weekend, and I think I’m going to blame it on the play I saw Friday night. You’re probably wondering what the connection between theater and food poisoning is (bad buttered popcorn?), but it all has to do with karma.

Normally, karma takes a while to actually work out. In the long run everything evens out, but in the short run it seems like small misdeeds go unpunished. This, however, was one of the rare situations in which divine justice took effect as immediately and hilariously as on an episode of Seinfeld.

See, I went to this play, and I kind of made fun of it. A lot. I’m a natural born critic and I’ve probably watched too many episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, so I think I’ve developed a not entirely justified sense of entitlement to criticize whatever is in front of me. Unfortunately, I didn’t check my horoscope on Friday, or I probably would’ve seen that it was “get bitch-slapped by karma” day.

The first part of divine justice was that I ended up sitting right in front of the director whose work I was criticizing. The rule of mockery is that the meaner you are, the more likely it is that you’re saying it right in front of the person you’re talking about.

The second part of divine justice was waking up several hours later, in the wee hours of Saturday morning, with all of my body’s distress signals going off at once.

What’s especially telling is that this is the second time in my year-and-a-half at Stanford that I’ve been laid up with stomach ailments. Last spring, I was one of only two people in my dorm to get the Plague, which escaped the confines of Toyon just to torment me.

Since I wasn’t of a particularly weak constitution before I arrived at Stanford, I have to wonder if this is some kind of divine signal urging me to mend my ways of debauch and mockery, at pain of severe digestive distress. I don’t know what a life without mockery would be like, but then again, I really do enjoy being able to eat things.

Anyway, I woke up early on Saturday morning, and by the time I actually got “up” I was in a pretty pitiful state. Ghastly pallor, dark circles under my eyes, bloodless lips. “Damn,” I thought as I looked at my sallow complexion in the mirror. “Either you’re in love, or you’ve got food poisoning.” I almost shared that bon mot with someone, but instead I just lay on my bed and whimpered softly.

I thought my lifeless eyes were a pretty good indication of the fact that I wasn’t feeling well, but I ended up having to reiterate again and again (and again, for the guy who picked me up in a bear hug and shook me around roughly), that I was actually feeling a little off and could you stop shaking me, please? And then everyone, uniformly, offered one response: “What did you eat?”

I guess people are motivated in part by morbid curiosity and part by worrying for their own health (selfish bastards), but I can tell you that someone who’s feeling nauseated really doesn’t want to talk about food. Neither do they want to watch someone else eat an entire packet of soy sauce or endure a discussion about eating an entire plate of hash browns covered in syrup. But the third part of divine justice is that whenever you are feeling nauseated, you must be surrounded by the most disgusting possible types of food.

(Last year, I got the stomach flu the day of my dorm’s special dinner, which was, of course, sushi. One girl offered brightly, “Sini, you should come eat a little something. It will make you feel better.”

“I’m going to throw up,” I offered equally brightly, and her face turned a gentle shade of green.)

The good thing is that my stomach has started feeling much better, just in time for my nose to get stuffed up. So, if the director is out there reading this, could she please have a talk with the universe? Or just stop poking needles in the voodoo doll?

If this column isn’t up to Sini’s usual standards, it’s because she really just wanted to take a nap. Email complaints and condolences to Sinim@stanford.edu.