Its been a busy past week. Lots of meetings and events. As I write this I'm preparing to go to the Georgia Tech vs. North Carolina Football Game. My brother managed to get tickets as well, though we will be cheering for different teams and his tickets are much better because he got them from a corporate client. Between the tickets and the golf, I tell him regularly he'll never get another gig like this.

We celebrated Stacey's birthday this week. She had a good birthday. We ate some good food, spent most of the day together...spending time with me always guarantees a good day....and she got to do some clothes shopping.

This past week I gave my first professional invocation at a special event. I was invited to a banquet by one of the churches ministry partners. I channeled 28 years of being a pastor's son and flipped the preacher-pray-in-public switch. In my studies through the years there are a couple of keys to the public prayer:
1. Use words like everyone, community, all, children, world and together.
2. Bless as many people as possible.
3. Talk about the greatness of the past, and ask for greatness in the future.
4. Use terms like gracious, gentle, kind, love, beautiful, lovely and loving.
5. Avoid saying words that make people stop and process like "you are a swell God" or "Lord you are really cool"
6. Avoid corporate buzzwords such as "God we thank you for returning on our investment everytime!" or "God your brand is unmatched!"
7. Always acknowledge the current natural disaster.
8. Go long enough to sound like you're a professional but don't put anybody to sleep.
9. Remember to bless the food, that's the real reason you're there.
10. Most importantly remember to bless the organization. If you don't, you probably won't be asked back.
11. Oh yeah one more, make sure you turn off your ringtone, the last thing you need happening is for Jailhouse Rock to start playing in your prison ministry achievers banquet prayer.

Finally, as promised I've been scouring the news to find this weeks person who will receive the chip. If you remember from the previous post, the chip doesn't allow you to reproduce. This is a product our world needs as evidenced by:

Operation Wedding

Classy.

The Chip

If I were king of the world I would create a chip that gets inserted into every new baby. The purpose of the chip: you only procreate when you've been approved. The chip would not be permanent. Someone can get a chip inserted and then have it removed. But if they do something that would cause us to want to cut off their gene pool...they get a chip.

So along with the Cobb family update, you'll also get a chip insertion update.

We'll start with the baseline criteria: Nobody under the age of 21 gets their chip removed. I think we can all agree that 16 year olds having babies is a bad idea. Even 20 year olds having babies is less than ideal.

Next baseline: While you're serving time in prison you have a chip. Since the chip works on men and women, we can keep the incarcerated from making babies. Hard to argue with the chip isn't it!

Now is where we start to get a little gray. The rest of the chip insertions occur on a case by case basis: Britney Spears gets a chip, Paris Hilton gets a chip, the Octo-Mom should have had a chip and Michael Jackson would have had a permanent chip.

You get the idea. This will be my base platform for my 2024 Presidential Run. Make checks payable to Friends of Phil Cobb.

Red Bull and More

So as you can see in the below post, last Saturday was quite a human interest show. Atlanta was the sight of the Red Bull SoapBox Race. There have only been 7 in the United States up until now. So between the Mario Brothers and Alice in Wonderland it was a creative melting pot of pop culture ideas. There were about 40 teams total. It was pretty hot but pretty fun as well. It was also a chance to try Red Bull. I didn't need to, I already love the stuff. It works really well for me. I get really focused for like 4 hours and I don't crash afterwards. I just wish it wasn't so expensive.

With this weekend being Labor Day two things are occurring: College Football. I make no apologies for the all time spent in my recliner on Saturday. Monday, Stacey and I both have the day off and so we'll try to do something fun. The weather isn't supposed to be great but hopefully it will holdout for us to do something.

I saw a woman at the mall on Friday wearing a shirt that made me question her humanity. The t-shirt was designed to look like a name tag and it said "Hello, my name is b$%#%." Why would you ever where that? I totally don't understand what goes through people's heads sometimes. The worst part was that she was with another guy. That means that he let her go out in public with that t-shirt as well.

I have high hopes for Duke Football this year...if that doesn't pan out there is always basketball.

I am going to a National Conference on Human Trafficking in the San Diego area in October. I'm really looking forward to getting to hear from the countries experts on fighting this issue. Its being put on by the Not For Sale organization.

Stacey is asleep as I write this and its 6:53 pm on Saturday evening. That's kind of the way its been:) Until next week.

Red Bull SoapBox Race Pictures