DMC Pharmacy & Pharmacists for Life International

People wonder why the rest of the world is always laughing in America's face.

Here's one reason..... a new DMC Pharmacy opening in Chantilly, VA is marketing itself as a pro-life pharmacy.

DMC is the latest in a worrying new trend across the country. Pharmacies who will actually turn away customers with prescriptions for birth control pills, the Plan B emergency contraceptive or who simply want condoms. Apparently, according to DMC, their workers have a "right of conscience" which allows them to refuse the supply of care or products that they find "personally objectionable"

DMC are members of Pharmacists for Life International, a bunch of insidious little playing-at-god hitlers who are attempting to force their own brand of religious fascism on the public and, by doing so, are putting women's health at risk.

I don't know about you, but I think there's the possibility for some comeback here? If people in Chantilly, VA (and/or wherever else PFLI is promoting its screwy ideology) find this as shit-grippingly offensive - as any NORMAL educated, intellectual person undoubtedly will - maybe the narrow-minded weasels who work at the DMC Pharmacy should - in return - also be penalized when they themselves try to shop at other local retailers, eat at a restaurant or fill their cars up with gas?

If I owned or ran a business there, I'd set up a coalition of like minded folks called the F.R.O.N initiative. I would refuse to serve anyone even vaguely associated with the DMC Pharmacy, first outing them publicly to to the rest of my customers as being the "local religious nutjobs". Invoking the initiative, I would then tell them they needed to Fuck Right Off, Now.

Just a suggestion.

Booming Bass Bins

Dear immature drivers with booming bass bins in your cars

Look, lets get a few things straight shall we?... I couldn't care ANY less that you want to permanently damage your hearing, have parts fall off of your car because of excessive vibration or get a cheap hard-on from rattling my windowpanes every time you drive down our street.

BUT, do you really HAVE to have such fucking poor musical taste whilst doing so?

yours sincerely
It Grips My Shit

What's Gripping YOUR shit?

Shit-Grippingly new from IGMS!

If you have something you'd like to squeeze out of your system, you can now try submitting it to us for consideration and possible publication within our dark dank passages.

If you send us something, please be sure to give us some kind of a user name/handle to credit your submission with, 'cos we don't want you gripping your shit as a result of us not acknowledging you properly.

Because this is our bathroom, we naturally reserve the right to edit all external poop where deemed necessary ....oh, and please try NOT to get all backed up if we fail to use/publish your submission. This is merely known as our "flushing clause"

Don't forget to wipe!

Big Pharma

The big pharmaceutical companies just can't help gripping everybody's shit, can they?

Not content with continuing to charge outrageous sums for their products and hiding their huge spending on doctor inducements and TV commercials behind the thin veil of "Research & Development Costs", they've now found a brand new way to continue gouging the American public.

Reuters announced that in 2007, the US Federal Trade Commission discovered 'big pharma' struck FOURTEEN deals which have ALL led to the delayed sale of various cheaper generic drugs. In these deals, 'big pharma' paid off the generic manufacturers with financial "compensation" in respect of delaying production of their version.

Bear in mind here that generic versions of a drug can be priced as low as 10% of their previous cost, thus helping the sick and elderly to benefit immensely.

But, it would seem, no-one is benefiting except the pharmaceutical companies, who maintain their immoral stranglehold... even when the FTC considers the deals to be a violation of antitrust laws.

It is noted in the article that a certain Barack Obama, senator for Illinois, is one of ten sponsors of Senate legislation trying to ensure these deals are made illegal. As he has made his bid for the Presidency based on taking zero donation money from big corporations or lobbying interests, I would love for him to eventually stick a knife in the side of these greedy trough-snorting pigs.

Why? .... because right now the bill has not got very far due to opposition from, yep you guessed it... the pharmaceutical companies.

Oh, and the generic manufacturers who are evidently profiting - and profiteering - from having to do absolutely fuck all!

Beer

Although your favorite shit-gripper is very much an ex-beer drinker, he nevertheless remains incensed by this article in the Wall Street Journal about restaurants and bars short-changing their customers.

Many have quietly replaced their 16-ounce pint glasses with 14-ouncers, naturally charging the same price as before. The glasses look the same but have an artificially-thick bottoms and are known as "falsies" by bartenders.

Bartenders are also encouraged by owners to increasingly pour 'pints' with heavy heads of foam, potentially denying drinkers up to two extra inches of beer in their glass!

Thankfully, beer drinkers have a voice in the shape of website Beer Advocate where forums are full of stories 'outing' rogue pint-pouring establishments across the country with comments from consumers and unhappy bartenders alike.

A GameWorks bartender is quoted as saying their staff are actually trained to say "it's a pint" when serving a (mere) 14-oz glass of beer, whilst the director of marketing for RMD Corp (a franchisee for Hooters Restaurant) boasts that by serving 14-oz pints they can get "20 more beers out of a keg".

Maybe the ultimate bit of 'spin' comes from Tanny Feerer, a vice president at Damons International (owner of Damon's Grill locations). She claims that "someone who comes in and wants a beer doesn't want a huge glass". What an idiot.

The shit gripper suggests that if you ordered a PINT of beer - you should kick up a fuss to make SURE you receive a PINT of beer.

Arbitration Clauses

Frightened of too much 'bad publicity' arising from fully-blown court cases, many companies - including home builders, car salesman, banks, credit card vendors, health offices and medical establishments - are asking customers to sign papers agreeing to arbitration in the event of any problems, billing issues, etc.

It Grips My Shit would like to advise people that arbitration strips consumers of their rights, and that it benefits nobody... except of course the corporation asking you to sign what may seem like an innocuous form.

• An arbitration claim will normally cost you a large chunk of change to set up.
• You are often limited to the evidence you can bring to an arbitration session.
• Arbitration sessions are generally held in far away offices so as to deliberately disadvantage the consumer.
• Arbitration decisions can rarely, if ever, be overturned.
• There is NO public record of any arbitration.
• Awarded damages are generally much lower than if made in a proper court setting.

Worst of all though are the relatively new arbitration services springing up across the country. Arbitration services actually sell their services to corporations, claiming they will save them money. They claim to be non-partial and unbiased but secretly market themselves as "an effective tool for collecting debts"

One arbitration service is NAF (National Arbitration Council), a company specializing in credit-card arbitration, and the recent subject of a major investigation by Business Week.

Employing some 1700 freelance arbitrators, accusations are made that NAF often rushes its part-time employees into making snap decisions, often blaming inadequate paperwork from the very corporation they are claiming to represent. It is also alleged that NAF deliberately delays arbitration hearings until a sympathetic (to the corporation, naturally) arbitrator can be scheduled.

If anyone is still under the impression that arbitration is a good thing for the consumer, it grips my shit to report that in California (one of the few states where arbitration results are made public) creditors (i.e. the corporations) won 99.8% of the disputes handled by NAF.

Richard Neely, a former West Virginia supreme court justice is quoted as saying "NAF is nothing more than an arm of the collection industry hiding behind a veneer of impartiality". His words are supported by the statistic that in a 26-month period (ending March 2007), and out of almost 34,000 cases handled by NAF, a grand total of just 30 were awarded in favor of the consumer.

NAF is now the subject of a lawsuit brought by the City of San Francisco, accused of making awards in favor of creditors (corporations) without sufficient justification. The city's attorney further alleges (in the same Business Week article) that NAF strips consumers of their legal right to a fair collection process.

I wonder why NAF didn't opt for arbitration?

Paramount Pictures & Hollywood

Think on this shit-gripper the next time you go and see a big film at the cinema and spend your hard-earned disposable income on your movie ticket...

Major Hollywood film studios are deliberately creating big sound drop-outs on their films, meaning you are not getting to enjoy everything you are paying for.

It's the movie makers latest crappy excuse to try and cut down on piracy. The prints of big films are tagged/coded with these sound drop-outs - known, apparently, as 'audio cap codes' - some of which can occur in major action and dialogue sequences. Hollywood bosses claim that if pirate copies do turn up they can identify which cinema the original recording came from based on where the sound drop-out occurred.

There's a real buzz brewing online about this issue, with many suggesting that if you experience this problem at the cinema you should simply ask for your money back at the box office, based on the fact that the sound quality was sub-standard. Once the cinemas start reporting back to Paramount Pictures (in the case of the Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie) bosses there might start realising they have fucked up.

Personally I've never comprehended the attraction of watching a major movie pirated via the method of taping it on a camera inside a cinema. The picture quality has to be shit and the sound quality even worse, surely? That's what crazy about this... anyone watching a pirated movie isn't going to give a rat's ass about the sound quality, but if I pay upwards to $20 for my ticket at some swanky film theatre I expect to get my money's worth and not have some paranoid twat of a studio head decide that I should be short changed by this kind of shit.

Of course this could all be 'urban legend', or no more than a malicious meme, but it has been noted that even film technicians are claiming its been going on for some time.

Looks like the movie industry is following the music industry's lead by ripping off its customers whilst simultaneously treating everyone like criminals? It would appear to be a class action lawsuit in the making.