As anyone who read the 2006 Regrets issue knows, Stranger associate editor emeritus Sean Nelson was supposed to write about Dave Eggers’s What Is the What for the books section. He failed to. He even failed to read it. Another writer, Travis Nichols, ended up reviewing it instead.

A guilt-racked Mr. Nelson offered to write a short humorous something explaining why he’d failed to meet his deadline for his review of What Is the What. Then Mr. Nelson failed to even get even this turned in within a reasonable timeframe. Not that it mattered, ultimately, because there ended up being no room for it in the print edition. But here, at long last, is his explanation.

(In other News of the Nelson: His book about Joni Mitchell’s Court & Spark is out now; here he is talking about the album on KUOW. And the book will be for sale at The Stranger’s next literary-event-in-a-bar-with-a-band. This one’s an evening of alternative fatherhood with Neal Pollack, Dan Savage, and “Awesome” and it happens at Chop Suey on Thursday, February 1. And it’s free. Nelson is emceeing. More details in next week’s paper.)