Gut shots are slow kills. You are more likely to die of infection than organ failure or blood loss.

Which I learnt from krav.

smonster, my awareness of gut shots has come from Civil War history and the toll of septicemia on the troops. ita is right, you are more likely to die of infection, organ and blood loss, but taking a shot to the gut speeds that process up considerably.

The Walter Reed museum of medical oddities taught me a lot about such things. Also, people can have hairballs...but that's another story.

Felters? Hatmakers? Furriers?

So I just watched Breaking Bad and all I can say is Holy Shit!

I almost do not know what to say except that Walt's devotion to Jesse is surprising to me. And I think I would take witness protection over the alternative.

Joe and I have lately been having this conversation about killing/not saving an innocent person if it puts oneself in danger. Mostly I was thinking about him being in Iraq and risking himself to save someone else. I told him my vote would be to come home even if that meant he had to live with the guilt of not saving the other person. And that led into "what decisions are not worth living after you've made them"

Well, I think Walter and Jesse might be at that point. They may survive (after all, show not called "Gus") but at what cost.

amyth is totally the other half of my brain! It was the movie Three Kings.

Archie Gates: You know anything about gunshot wounds?
Conrad Vig: I don't know.
Archie Gates: Specifically, the worst thing about a gunshot wound, provided you survive the bullet, is something called sepsis.
Chief Elgin: Infection of the blood...
Archie Gates: That's right. Say a bullet tears into your gut. It creates a cavity in the dead tissue. That cavity fills up with bile, and bacteria, and you're fucked.

IIRC, there was a little animated graphic and everything.

You know that when the 911 dispatchers see Rayland's number pop up they're like "Oh lord, here we go again."

From one of my Twitter friends, worth repeating here, too:

RT @codinghorror If the Coen Brothers made a TV show, it would be Breaking Bad. #yesitreallyisthatgood

Amazon has one of those pre-orders up for Justified - you know - the kind where they don't have an actual release date.

One of the good things about Amazon pre-orders is if their price goes down, you get it at the cheaper price, but you're locked in if it goes up for some reason.

I have just preordered. Can't remember the last time I did that for a series.

Something else I liked in the finale - when Johnny was beating Boyd. It wasn't all sexy choreographed to music with changing angles and such. There was no score, no moving, and the camera stayed still (IIRC). No flurry of fancy kicks and punches. It was clear that the punching hurt Johnny, too (physically). The only thing to focus on was one person, hurting another, on a third's orders. All three criminals, all three family.

I have had to ff through that beating scene between Boyd and Johnny each time I've rewatched it...up to 4 now, I think. As you say, it was so real, it wasn't entertaining. Appropriate to the story? Oh yeah.