Disclaimer: A word which here means "admitting that Lemony Snicket, that incredible genius, owns A Series of Unfortunate Events and all characters pertaining thereto so that I don't get sued like poor Beatrice."

A/N: My first SoUE story!  Hopefully another one should be coming along soon, both of them no doubt absolutely inane.  Oh well...I suspect the main reason why this one will be stupid is that I thought of the title before the plot.  If you decide not to read the story, at least read the bonus trailer, which I personally think is closer to the spirit of the series than some others I've read.  Remember, it's up to you, the readers, to decide whether or not this story has lived up to its title, which (believe it or not!) does have something to do with the plot.  If you don't understand the point of the title, think about it for a while.

Verified Fanfiction Drivel

Unless you have lived in a beautiful green mansion where the world is quiet all your life, I am sure you must know by now that there are many things in life that one does not like.  I did not like tramping through the Murky Marsh to find the remains of the Quagmire residence and pick up the secret package inscribed with the words Give to Beatrice before it's too late.  I did not like the nasty development involving two very white-faced maids and a pair of small trout that forced me to move this computer from my room at the Horrible Hotel to a concrete bunker far underneath the Disagreeable Desert.  And I did not at all like the flame I received last week from unibrow_orphnkilr, who says he will alert the owners of fanfiction.net to the dangers of allowing me to post stories.

The Baudelaires, I'm sorry to say, know even more than I about unpleasant events like these.  In fact, one might say they are experts on misery, a word which here means "Count Olaf, a greedy and most unpleasant man who follows the Baudelaires about and makes most unpleasant things happen to them."  And, as I am even sorrier to say, they were experiencing a surpassingly unpleasant event at the moment our story opens.

Slowly and leisurely at first, but quickly picking up speed, the trailer containing Violet and Klaus Baudelaire rolled down the steep slope toward certain death.  Violet screamed and clung to Klaus.  Klaus screamed louder and clung to Violet.  Watching in helpless horror, their baby sister Sunny screamed, "Jerk!" which probably meant something along the lines of "You terrible man, must you always make our lives so miserable?"

Meanwhile, far above the scene and blissfully unaware of the danger their friends were in, Isadora and Duncan Quagmire floated peacefully in Hector's hot air balloon.  Having narrowly escaped Count Olaf and his cronies, they were now bored to tears less than a week later.

Duncan stretched out and yawned lazily.  "So, what do we do today?"

"The same thing we do every day, Duncan," Isadora said dully.  "Try to retain our sanity."  In the adjacent basket, Hector turned over and kept snoring.  Really, it was almost impossible to wake the man during his afternoon nap.  Now, what was there to do in a hot-air balloon in the middle of nowhere?  Other than looking for shapes in the clouds, Isadora could think of nothing interesting—and she had had quite enough of cloudgazing in the last few days.

Quiet prevailed for a few minutes.  Then Duncan suggested cheerfully, "I know!  We could play I Spy."  Peering down at the faraway ground, he said, "I spy with my little eye something—"  Isadora growled threateningly, and he subsided with a small sigh.

"I said try to retain our sanity, smart one," she muttered, favoring him with a dark look.  Duncan retreated into a corner and started looking for shapes in the clouds.  After two minutes he had found an eye, an eye, and...another eye.  This was extremely depressing, so he gave up after a while and traced the weave on the side of the basket.

Isadora's voice jolted him out of his semi-catatonic state.  "Hey, Duncan, come have a look at this."  Obedient as always, he heaved himself up with a sigh and joined her to see what she had discovered now.  In the far corner of the basket was a small, compact case that could only be...

"A laptop!" he breathed, eyes sparkling at the possibilities open to them with access to a computer.  Checking quickly over her shoulder to make sure Hector was still asleep, Isadora reverently picked up the precious object and snapped it open with a flourish.  Now if they could only figure out the passwords...

Nights spent by the fire studying books on computer hacking began to come back to Duncan.  "Here, allow me," he whispered, gently nudging his sister out of the way.  His fingers flew over the keyboard, and after a few minutes they were in.

"You're good," Isadora said, giving him a brief look of admiration at his electronic prowess before she became all business again.  "Right.  To the Internet!"  She deftly clicked on the icon and they both watched in something approaching worshipfulness as the screen came up.

Clicking on the search terms box, Isadora murmured, "Hmm...how about something like 'poetry forum'?"  Duncan rolled his eyes at the predictability of it all, but wisely said nothing.  Honestly, did she expect to find anything remotely interesting with a search like that?

Apparently.  More surprisingly, she did.  "This looks cool," she mused softly, looking at a link.  Duncan frowned.

"But that has nothing to do with 'poetry forum'!  It must have just picked up the words somewhere," he protested.  She shrugged and clicked on it anyway...

The triplets' eyes widened at the wondrous site they beheld.  There, in all its glory, was a page bearing the legend "fanfiction.net"!  Isadora's mouth formed an "O" of delight as she traced the links beneath: Anime, Cartoon, Game, Movie, Book, Miscellaneous, Comic, and TV Show.  Why, this was a dream come true!

"Hey!" Duncan said suddenly, eyes fixed on something in the messages below the links.  "Look at that down there, it says something about this new site called FictionPress.com for original fiction and poetry—"  The rest of his remark was cut short by Isadora elbowing out of the way to get a better look at this extraordinary piece of luck.  Ever since their parents and Quigley had died, they had had rotten luck, but here was a potential reversal in their fortunes.  Who could be unhappy with a wellspring of joy like this?

Hector stopped snoring and began to fidget restlessly, a sign of imminent awakening.  Isadora and Duncan looked at each other with a sigh, but knew they would have to shut down the laptop quickly before he caught them.  Not that he would yell at them—oh, no, Hector never yelled—but he would probably give them a lecture on the dangers of computers and how they could electrocute themselves or worse, give out information on the Net to a stranger.

Looking crestfallen at Hector's inopportune timing, Isadora sadly turned off the computer and returned it to its case, glancing over her shoulder quickly to make sure he was still half-asleep.  She beckoned to Duncan and they hastily climbed into the adjoining basket, practicing their innocent looks.

Hector snorted softly, groaned, and blinked a few times.  "Well," he said, yawning hugely, "that was a good nap."  Looking at the triplets' somewhat downcast faces, he added, "What's wrong, kids?  You look down."  Duncan and Isadora put on fake grins while flashing "Oh, boy, here we go again," looks at each other.

"Nothing!  No, really, nothing at all," Duncan protested, a note of controlled panic creeping into his voice.  It was too late, though—Hector was determined to cheer them up.  Isadora stifled a groan and steeled herself for the coming horror.

Hector's face brightened suddenly as he got an idea.  "I know!" he cried triumphantly.  "We can play Old Maid!"  There was a small squeak from Duncan as this sank in, but Hector was oblivious and began dealing out the cards happily.  There was no escape.

"Until tomorrow," Isadora murmured, looking longingly at her new best friend, the laptop.

A/N: Yes, I've kind of given up on writing Snicket style because it isn't my style, so the first two paragraphs of this chapter mark the beginning and end of my attempts to imitate his writing.  Thank goodness, because I have a feeling I'm not much good at it.  Oh well...You may have noticed that the story started with the Baudelaires and quickly switched to the Quagmires.  I decided the Quagmires deserved a story more or less all to themselves.  Here is the bonus SoUE trailer, which I put in because everyone else was doing them a month or two ago when I started writing this.

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Bonus SoUE Trailer:

Beethoven's 5th starts up in the background, which is black with lightning bolts occasionally flashing across it [note: optional rumbles of thunder may be added here for effect].  In case you're not familiar with Beethoven's 5th, it's the one that starts out "Da da da DAAAAA, da da da DAAAAA..."

VOICEOVER: Coming in 2004: A Gustav Sebald Film.  A Series of Unfortunate Motion Pictures: Film the First: The Bad Beginning.

Words appear on screen in blinding white:

Don't watch this movie.

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Anyway, the next chapter should be coming fairly soon, and unless something changes drastically it will involve the horrors of signing up for a fanfiction/FictionPress.com ID.  At least I hope it will come soon...I don't usually update very fast, mainly because I'm working on so many stories at the same time.  My attitude of late has been something like "Why are you complaining?  You got your update, that should hold you for the next two months."  But I'm working on that, I promise, and sooner or later I'm going to write another SoUE story called "The Sorry Story" or something like that.  Sounds fascinating, no?