Sunday afternoon, 4:30 p.m. The Sunday-Night-Homework-Rush will soon set in, but your iPad keeps sending you push notifications, beckoning you with its irresistible red bubbles. What to do, what to do…

In the left corner, weighing in at nine-hundred-and-fifty-four pages, your Nacho-Cheese-Dorito-finger-stained third-edition copy of The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History. In the right corner, weighing in at 54 cheese-balls and 14 cases of Go-Go-Juice (a delightful mixture of Mountain Dew and Red Bull), an already-queued up episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. It is a tough choice. Honey Boo Boo seems like the obvious answer, but saving a full serving of Genghis Khan and the Dysfunctional Descendants for a Sunday night is going to require quite a bit of Go-Go-Juice. Then again, you've already had a double dosage of the Copernicans today, but you can only watch so much of Keeping Up With the Kardashians before your voice becomes two octaves higher and your butt.... Too much thinking. Gotta take a break.

***

You are amongst a group of 25 other tall, attractive, attention-seeking women, similarly clad in 16th century European garb. You seem to be more appropriately dressed for a medieval coronation ceremony, but for some reason you find yourself with your right hand on your outstretched hip, a chokingly-tight corset chastising you for all of those Chipotle burritos, posing for a picture in front of a swimming pool. You are there, but nobody pays any attention to you. Like an ugly baby picture on #ThrowbackThursday, you blend in.

At the focal point of the crowd of Victorian fantasies stands a man of magnetizing regality—he wears a feathery purple hat, a long, fur cloak, and glares down at the camera with a clearly contrived half-smirk. He wields a perfectly coiffed rose like it is his scepter. He looks like a jerk to you, but for some reason all of the women are clamoring for even a fraction of his attention. A loud voice reverberates through the shimmering swimming pool as you are commanded to stay tuned for Henry’s official Rose Ceremony (who will receive the axe?).

You sidestep your way through a commercial for a divorce lawyer and an ad for Weight Watchers until you find yourself in a large room that smells of a synthesis of tanning oil and laundry detergent. As five similar-looking guys in long white robes enter, your short hair is attacked by a flamethrower filled with shaping gel, and your skin shade starts to resemble the bag of stale cheetos you left in your room last night. You have a sudden urge to passionately fist-pump into the air, but you are able to contain yourself for the sake of observation. You listen to the men in robes, as there seems to an argument going on between someone called “The Lunatic” and another guy named Leo. Both men speak in surprisingly thick New Jersey accents.

“Dude, you gotta problem with me and my church, tell me to my face!”

“Maybe if your face weren’t so ugly, I woulda! But instead I gotta nail my 95 Theses to your damn door just to get your attention!”

Leo slams his hand down on the counter. “That’s it. You’re not coming with us to the club tonight!”

“Like I’d want to? All that comes out of your mouth is just a bunch of papal bull anyways!”

After some more back and forth between the two, you’ve had enough of this rousing routine of Gym-Tan-Excommunication. You hop on the next commercial and settle for a table of elderly-looking Caucasian men in tight slacks and ill-placed wigs, puffing out their chests and sticking out their over-powdered cheeks in what appears to be a pouting gesture. Some of the men are socializing while others crowd around a giant piece of yellowish paper with a bunch of really tiny scribbling on it. It kind of looks like the thing Nicolas Cage stole in National Treasure, but you can’t seem to remember before a conversation starts between the men signing the document.

“Eww. John. I can’t believe you did this. What makes you think you can take up the whole page with your one little signature? Who the hell do you think you are?!”

With an effortless hairflip, John retorts, “I’m the present of this damn Congress, that’s who! Stop starting stupid drama Sam.”

A third party chimes in, trying to calm the tension. “Dudes, calm down. Let’s just all relax with some of this hemp the Sage of Mount Vernon and I grew.”

John wrinkles his white nose at the smell, firing back, “Tom, you’re disgusting. Get out of here!”

The room starts to spin, as arrogant eye rolls blur into meaningless fist-pumps and vapid lip-pursing, and suddenly…

***

Your head jerks up with a start as you make a feeble attempt at wiping the small island of drool off of your chin.

The clock on your iPad, where Honey Boo Boo is still tantalizing you with incessant fart jokes, reads 9:12. It is Sunday night, and you have yet to open your history book.

Crap.