Life hack: Make yourself smile with templates

Sow some template Easter eggs to harvest again and again.

Image created by Gencraft AI.

I will let you into a little secret…

Every time I get about 250 words into writing a new post I have a little chuckle.

Not because I always think of some hilarious play on words by that stage, but because I always do the first draft in a Pages document and by the time I’ve worked my way down to about 250 words, I can see the footer of the Master document. The left hand footer says: 

GEOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS REPORT

All in CAPS, in very small type.

I find this funny for several reasons:

1. I imagine the likelihood of me actually writing a document entitled ‘Geology for Beginners Report’ hilarious.

2. It infers that not only do I know enough about geology, to discern the advanced material from the amateur stuff, but I’m handily creating a report to aid some beginners. Unbelievable.

3. It’s all in CAPS which gives it great importance and pomp.

4. The fact that it is there, in the footer, at all, infers that I know enough about Geology to need more than one page, which again, I find hilarious.

5. For a brief moment I imagine I’m a Geology Professor.

6. I congratulate myself for leaving it in my template because I knew it would make me laugh, again and again. You clever cookie, I was so right.

This is about the 18th post I’ve started and it is still making me smile. What value I’m contriving from those four little words. 

Is anyone playing the same game? As it was created from the standard Essay template served up when you create a ‘new’ document.

I’m sure I will eventually tire of it, but then perhaps instead of deleting it I’ll change it to something like ‘Top Secret: the Kennedy files’ or ‘Life Cycle of a Glow Worm’ or ‘101 things to do with lint’.

The thing is, try as I might, I’m struggling to think of anything funnier than ‘Geology for Beginners Report’, it’s so damned obtuse it’s beautiful.

And am now wondering whether it was workshopped to death, and in fact this was the 123rd suggestion that was unanimously voted in by the entire Template Committee.

Christ, I sincerely hope there is an actual Template Committee! 

My favourite Apple Pages template category is, of course, Miscellaneous, where they’ve basically run out of ideas, but felt that an ‘Invoice’ template was useful, but couldn’t be arsed to accompany it with it’s natural brethren of Statement and Credit Note and so they’ve teamed it with a couple of brochures.

The Committee presumably decided that we would only ever need two types of Brochure: ‘Elegant’ and ‘Museum’.

I’m not even making this up, these are the actual two categories in the Apple Pages template selection!

Museum? Really? Why Museum? Do you think the office where these are produced overlooks a Geology Museum perhaps? Or perhaps there’s just a pile of rocks that have been roped off to inspire this title?

I would have thought Sales, Safety, Welcome, Information, Menu would all have been far more popular than Museum, but then I’m not on that Committee. Thank heavens.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share this with you, and perhaps inspire you to revisit your own templates and plant such ‘easter eggs’ simply to make you smile.

Please share any template jokes you may currently be enjoying in the comments below, the more obscure the better.

You’re welcome.

K8x

PS: While prepping it for publication, I just rinsed it for another laugh by adding ‘Geology for Beginners’ as a tag. 😂 I’m so easily amused. #isitjustme

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