In about a month, my new book will be published. It’s called Executricks: or How To Retire While You’re Still Working. Compact, entertaining and wise, the book will teach you how to live like an executive even if you aren’t one, cleanly, legitimately, creating while you are still in mid-career all the benefits of a retired existence. It will be essential reading for anybody with a heartbeat.

On this site will be a host of entertaining and stimulating features on this topic – quizzes, contests, galleries of famous people who have succeeded bigtime while essentially living the life of the affluent retiree by using a host of Executricks. You will also be offered an opportunity to tell you own stories, as always; how you’ve served the system and beaten it at the same time, maybe even tales about those who did it less elegantly than they might have.

And of course you will be incessantly exhorted to purchase the book via a handy link at the top of the page. I hope you will do so.

All that is in the future, however. Today I would like to finish what began about a year ago and has continued with some energy ever since: the work we have done together on two important topics — the Crazy Bosses we serve and the Bulls**t Jobs we occupy. I have a trove of letters you have sent me on both subjects, many of which are publishable. I will now go back into my archive and work them up, so that we may complete both blogs, bring them to some kind of closure.

This is a big task for me. Fortunately, I travel between California and New York a great deal and should have plenty of time, if I don’t put it off. Then, after a month or so, I will bring together all my new stuff and any new submissions to the blogs that YOU may care to make, and retire both from this page, making way for new things.

The Crazy Bosses and Bulls**t Jobs blogs will not die, no way. They are deep, trenchant, funny, sad, illuminating, chock-a-block with YOUR stories, ideas and tales of woe and triumph. I read somewhere that since we’re in a recession we should all be repurposing things a lot more. That sounds like a good idea. I’m nothing if not a creature of my times.

All of this is a typically long-winded way of inviting all who are reading this to poke around each topic on this site, think about your own experience and those of your friends and enemies, and lob in a few stories if the spirit moves.

Due to the somewhat complex architecture of this site, however, negotiating around these topics and registering your comments and thoughts is not always as easy as it might look. So I’m going to quickly walk you through it.

Crazy Bosses

Go to the main home page and read about the topic here.

Then look at a nice gallery of Crazy Bosses, starting with Stalin here.

You may then read about the Crazy Bosses that your fellow readers have enjoyed here.

and finally, submit your own stories here.

Bulls**t Jobs

Likewise, start your Bulls**t Jobs investigations here.

Then look at a horrifying panoply of them here.

Then read about your fellow bulls**tters here.

And then submit your own here.

While you’re doing your thing, I’ll do what I said — go back into the e-mines and dig out the rest of the material that’s lying around glittering in the digital caverns. I’ll report back when I’m as done as I want to be.

Oh and by the way: anybody wishing simply to send me their crazy boss stories or bulls**t jobs without the comfy mediation of this blog may do so by sending me an email to bingblog@gmail.com.

That’s bingblog@gmail.com. Please mark your e-mail either Crazy Bosses or Bulls**t Jobs. Or, you know, if you just want to write me to say hi that’s okay too.

Have a great weekend. In fact, start now, huh?

Word comes from Megan in Chicago, one of our most valued and assiduous correspondents, that this humble blog has been blocked by the IT police of her company. Megan writes:

I can tell you one thing that is going the wrong way. Bing’s Blog page has been officially blocked at work with a code of “Social Networking”… Stanley baby – can you pull a few strings and help the numb nuts in IT understand that I need this site in my daily work life? How can I possibly put in a full 10 hours without a spoonful of delicious irony! I’ve explained that this is a very useful site which quite often covers business related topics. I’ve stated my case that while the site is not essential to doing my job, it does help me do my job better. They’ve claimed that they will review and let me know – *sigh*. I’ll miss you sweetheart…

I’ll miss you, too, Megan! It’s all so unfair! A social network? Us? Could that be? Every day we have as serious a discussion of current business-related events as the facts warrant! Sure, a lot of the time we focus on the ridiculous and outrageous, but that’s a direct effect of the times in which we live, right? Just look at the following issues we’ve dealt with in recent months:

• Guys who play golf and bridge while their city-states are flailing, and are then super-compensated upon their departure;
• The collapse of huge banking institutions that stupidly gave loans to people who couldn’t repay them when belts tightened even one teeny notch;
• The most aggressive Fed in living memory, moving dynamically to do who knows what?;
• Utter confusion on the part of experts and pundits of all stripes, and a general sense of incapacity and weirdness from all over;
• The usual insanity pertaining to mergers, acqusitions, divestitures and other organizational hooey in organizations from Apple and AOL to Yahoo and whatever companies that start with the letter Z you can think of;
• Intense activity in the digital arena, including the geometric growth of online retail while brick and mortar stumbled;
• The worst performance by the airlines industry since Howard Hughes attempted to commercialize the Spruce Goose;
• Other (your peeve here).

We’ve covered these terrific business trends and stories just like a responsible information source should, with aplomb, sagacity and no little amount of sang froid. We’ve also looked extensively at your bulls**t jobs and crazy bosses, and even occasionally offered some advice in our Ask Bing sector. And if, in so doing, we have also attracted a witty, savvy, saucy, snazzy, slightly snarky group that get together with some regularity to comment on the general situation? Does that make us a social network worthy of blockage? Well! All I can say is…

Thanks for the promotion, IT dudes! Now come on! Free the blog! Lift the blockade! Let freedom ring!

As something of a bulls**t artist myself, I was particularly appalled and amused by the story in Friday’s USA Today about Lynn Brewer, a former Enron functionary who, according to the story, has passed herself off as a fallen executive star of the failed energy conglomerate and carved out a huge career in the ethics industry.

According to the story, Brewer, known to her associates at Enron as EddieLynn Morgan, basically whipped up a convincing alternate persona, feasting on the piety and credulity of those in the business of scolding business for fun and profit. She has even been invited to speak to the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo. Working in her favor in this effort seems to be the fact that she can easily be confused with genuine whistle-blower Sherron Watkins, a confusion she apparently did little to dispel.

As we head into this weekend of thought and reflection, I highly recommend a deep read into this little saga. We all of us pretend to be something we are not when we enter the world of business. Some take it to such highly entertaining heights, however, that they provide some kind of lesson for us all.

If you have any idea what that lesson might be, please don’t hesitate to let me know. In the meantime, I’m preparing for National Boss’s Day tomorrow. Ah, what a festive occasion that will be. Or else!

What do Business Analyst, Strategic Planning Consultant, Chiropractor and Environmental Impact Researcher have in common? You know it! They’re all bulls**t jobs, according to our newest correspondents on the subject.

Go to http://bingjobs.blogs.fortune.com and take a look. Like I said, I’ll be updating that blog with all your tasty bulls**t jobs in the coming weeks, and hopefully you’ll continue to lob in more until the pile is as big and yeasty as all outdoors!

You’re not going to believe this. One of my loyal readers, Ken from New Jersey, pointed out not long ago that the last posting on my Crazy Bosses blog was on May 30. Wow, I thought. That’s weird. Where did all your stories go? Did all your bosses suddenly turn sane? Did you stop caring about the issue?

So I looked at the blog, which may be found, given the somewhat complex and inscrutible architecture of this site, at http://bingbosses.blogs.fortune.com. Sure enough, a layer or two down from all the other interesting material on the subject, the last of your postings was dated May 30. And the one before it, too. And the one before that. And the one before that. Hmm, I thought. That’s odd.

I scrolled down and it became clear to me that basically what happened is that ALL of your stories were set down in that blog, which given the somewhat idiosyncratic and abstruse architecture of this site, had last been updated on May 30th. Then we all moved on to other things, of which there are, of course, many.

Then I figured what the hey, and took a look at another vast and fascinating chronicle, the site dedicated to your Bulls**t Jobs, which, given the subtle and rather delicate organization of this site, may be found amid a welter of other interesting stuff on the subject, at http://bingjobs.blogs.fortune.com. And guess what. The last posting on THAT blog was made in early May. Early May!

So I talked to my editor at The Bing Blog and asked her what could have happened to, like three months of your thoughts, replies, insults and tales of management horror and bulls**t? And she looked and, to make a moderately long story short, thanks to her, and to the fact that nothing really ever dies once it is sequestered on a server, we found them.

Think of Indiana Jones stumbling on a vast chasm filled with treasure. He wasn’t any happier than I was.

Here’s where we stand. I have one huge file full of the stuff you’ve written about your crazy bosses to me, and another, almost as long, where you tell me all about your various bulls**t jobs. I mean, they’re huge. And I love them very much.

I don’t know if you know a lot about my situation, or care, actually, but what the deal is is that I actually have a real, 8 to 6 job that demands some attention, and I also do this and some other stuff as well. My editors at The Bing Blog are pretty much in the same position. Like they also have real business writers to attend to, and breaking news beyond, say, what your boss may expect of you or what happened the last time you were screwed over by your airline. This is just to say that they’re, you know, busy. And unlike me, they don’t always think about me.

Which brings us to me. In the evening, for instance, when my day’s “real” work is supposedly done, I need sufficient time to drink and, of course, eat, and then usually drink again. Occasionally, I see people, some of whom are even friends that will outlive my business career. This, too, eats up valuable time that could be spent loading up my two beloved blogs with your input.

So it’s going to take me a while is what I’m saying. I’ll do them a bit at a time, and post them as I go. Sure there are a lot of them. But as God is my witness it’s not going to lick me. I’m going to go through every page and every posting and when it’s all over, you’ll never go unpublished again. No, nor any of your folk. If I have to delegate a portion of it to somebody else and even pay them — as God is my witness, you’ll never go unpublished again!

Today we roll out the newest in our series of Ask Bings. The previous group is still available on the lower righthand corner of the home page for those who are nursing the same problems they were a few weeks ago. I sympathize, by the way. My problems don’t seem to go away, either.

Shooting me questions this time was a guy who works for what he calls an “ultra-wimp,” who not surprisingly is to be found in academia. My dad worked in that dry and flinty bureaucratic soil, and I can tell you that brand of limp manipulator can be particularly thorny and vicious. Another question comes from a fellow who wants to leave one bulls**t job for another, more prestigious one. Again, a reasonable request, and achievable if one deploys the right strategy. A third inquiry finds a young woman who is dealing with that most ubiquitous of crazy bosses, a mean little bully who exploits her work and denies her the respect she deserves. They just don’t seem to go away, these guys, do they? Until, you know, they do. That’s the good news.

There are some other cries for help, including one person who is wrestling with that most hairy of issues for any working person: how to get a raise. We could spend a long time on that one, and maybe I will one day. There are many schools of thought on the subject, most of which go at it rationally. Since like many core business issues it is not, in my opinion, a totally rational one, I tend to veer to another approach, some of which is touched on in today’s Q&A.

A note to all of you who take the time and trouble to write in to this portion of the Bing website: I read every one of your letters and always marvel at how essentially the same major torments and uncertainties play themselves out in an infinite variety of ways. Each job has its very specific cultural milieu, its own cast of leading and supporting characters, its own pains and gains. Each boss is both the same as every boss and completely different than any others. Thank God. As long as the world stays the way it is, I will never go out of business.

So keep writing. I’ll keep thinking about the things that bother you. It’s certainly better than obsessing about my own situation all the time.