We always treat the New York Times like a closet full of stuffed shirts. But one should never forget that it's staffed by the nerds of the forensics club, the once-quiet bookish folks you ignored in study hall, with a smattering of the gays of the school theater and some mathletes. Witness today's Q&A with departing Times Book Review copy editor Alison McCulloch, published by the in-house school paper, Ahead of the Times.

Alison McCulloch Departing

Alison McCulloch, a copy editor of the Book Review, is leaving this week. She has some parting thoughts, compliments of Helen Verongas.

By HELEN VERONGOS

Alison McCulloch, much beloved copy editor on the New York Times Book Review and frequent visitor to her former spiritual prison, the foreign desk, to which she returns for overtime when the cosmic rubber band of guilt snaps her on the knuckle, is leaving, having served her Times — and the IHT as well.

She is going home.

Call her cold for leaving us, call her a doctor, call her a cab. Her time has come.

But before she takes flight, she has consented to a brief, edgy Q. and A.

Q. In an ideal world, The Times would have the right to execute you as punishment for leaving. Hypothetically, what would you like as your last meal?

A. This isn't in the contract, I want my union rep. — and some steak frites with b arnaise sauce.

Q. Where are you going?

A. Somewhere in New Zealand. (Look, I know you think it's small, but it's bigger than Britain, O.K.)

Q. What will you not do there?

A. Drive on the right-hand side of the road.

Q. How long has it been since you lived in New Zealand?

A. 14 years.

Q. Where have you lived, anyway?

A. Here (4 states); there (both islands); interludes in Sydney and Paris.

Q. The Times is full of philosophers, but you are one of the few who really earned the title. What piece of wisdom would you impart as you depart?

A. Life is not TK.

Q. If you were exiled to a beautiful beach at the bottom (some would say top) of the world, what would be your Desert island disc? Book?

A. CD: "Bitches Brew": Miles Davis
Other A. Book: "Lost in the Cosmos," by Walker Percy.

Q. Many of your former colleagues will miss your philosophy jokes. Can you share one here?

A. I know who you are and you know very well that I never told any philosophy jokes.

(Reporter fills in suitably lame philosophy joke from http://www.philosophyblog.com.au/philosophy-jokes-philosophers-humour/ , which attributes it to the China Daily)

A job hunter, a philosophy major, went here, there and everywhere in his search for employment, but in vain. Having run out of options, he swallowed his pride and took up the offer of playing a bear in a costume at a zoo. He was locked up in a cage, where he was supposed to imitate various bear-like movements to entertain visitors.

To his horror, another bear appeared in the cage and started approaching him. He panicked and was on the brink of collapse when the bear said: "Don't be afraid. I'm also a philosophy major."

Q. Does the universe have a meaning?

A. No, thank goodness.

Q. Does the newspaper business have a future?

A. Probably not, but I don't think it matters. There'll be something else.

Q. Does it matter?

A. See above.