Today is Job Action Day

No, this is not a call for a general strike, although one can see that the name Job Action Day might suggest such a thing. Instead, according to its promoters (an employment agency in Washington State), "Job Action Day is a day for all job-seekers and workers to take stock of their situations and make plans and/or take action steps to improve their careers." The theme for this year's Job Action Day is "Build Your Career Brand."

We don't know what the heck 'building a career brand' means. But, if it means to distinguish yourself in the office, you might try bringing a box or two of doughnuts to work this morning in honor of National Doughnut Day.

Usual Suspect Hallmark says today is American Football Day, supposedly to mark the anniversary of the formation of the old American Football League. The Blog of Days marked the NFL's birthday in August; we'd be willing to get behind American Football Day, too, only our crack research staff could find nothing to substantiate Hallmark's claim that today has any significance in AFL history. (OK, the crack research staff merely read the AFL's Wikipedia entry, but still....)

The Brits celebrate today as Guy Fawkes Day, commemorating the exposure of the "Gunpowder Plot." Catholic opponents of King James I planned to blow up Parliament and the King; Guy Fawkes was caught guarding a store of gunpowder beneath the House of Lords on this date in 1605. The Stuarts may not have been the most popular of English dynasties, but in a contest with Catholics, they'd prevail every time... until, of course, a number of the Stuarts converted to Catholicism. (Charles II formally converted on his deathbed; his brother and successor, King James II, was Britain's last Catholic monarch, kicked out in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. A grandson of James II, Henry, would become a Catholic priest and, eventually, a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, rising to Dean of the College of Cardinals.)