snicket

The innovation the author describes would look more like: Phil: I'm just walking down a fine wee snicket.

Older kids did go through the entire Lemony Snicket series though (way before NetFlix series came up) so that's something.

Also, while VFD can mean Variable Frequency Drive, it is also used to mean Vacuum Fluorescent Display, and for Lemony Snicket fans it can me a whole lot more.

I think so, and it's very close in tone to the pedantic pedagogy that Adams created and Snicket adopted.

The author's account is about as anonymous as Lemony Snicket is pseudonymous.

Somehow this article reminds me of the Lemony Snicket novels.

I remember listening to the Lemony Snicket author telling Terry Gross how he plants his favorite obscure words in his super-popular kids' books, in the hope of propagating them to the next generation of readers.

(I was sure I put a comment here earlier explaining - wonder where it went?) I got this in an email from HarperCollins today, from the Lemony Snicket Mailing list.

Written in classic Snicket style, saying everything opposite: "Dear Reader, Something terrible has happened.

But they made perfect sense to Violet." Violet Baudelaire goes on to use the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light to set fire to a piece of sail cloth using only moonlight and the lens from a spying glass in "The Wide Window" by Lemony Snicket.

Or just examples of authors using their pen names as a character in the series (see Lemony Snicket).

A similar sentiment is expressed wonderfully tersely in Lemony Snicket's notes on Occupy Wall Street.

Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) made this very clear in an interview that I saw several years ago.