Rev. André Schlesinger
Mac Evangelist, Postal Protagonist

Thursday - Police Station: Fuck, what a mess.. Looking down the hallway, past the offices and the jail cells, I see dead people, all I see are dead people, smoldering bodies piled atop one another, some still billowing deadly fire and flame, one or two still twitching on the floor in a perverse parody of life underneath third degree burns. As I make my way to the the stairwell leading down to the 2nd floor I loot the dead and dying of all their weapons and life giving sustenance while a golden shower of piss insures that I don't get burned myself. I'm all loaded up now on "health" and I have just about all the ammo I can carry. Time to head home. Just as I am about to make my exit down the stairwell three things happen: first a shot that misses and then another shot that comes so close I see it hit the wall in front of me and a third which finds its mark, presumably in my back, as I notice both my health and body armor strength drop significantly. He advances and he's almost on top of me now. Reflex gives sway to thought: do I take this one out with the napalm launcher and be done with it? I didn't buy this game to "be done with it." I save my napalm for later, top off on some nearby health and hit the "1" key. I'm going to enjoy myself with this one, I proceed to beat my lone but heavily armed adversary to death with a shovel.

Flashback; Home, 1997: My new Power Mac G3 had arrived just a few days ago. My first desktop since since my secondhand Mac Classic (having previously run an SE II given to me by a friend) and my first new computer since my Apple Newton (remember those?) I've got e-mail and web access with a dial up account on a 56k modem, what more can I ask for? Maybe a game would be nice when I'm not using my allotted monthly on line hours? I'm not a "gamer," by any means and I find something about gamers to be just a little unhealthy, just a little supple in the wrist if you know what I mean. Besides, even though Apple Computer has always been been at the vanguard of both video and audio performance in home PCs and the fact that most computer games were being developed on Macs only to be marketed for Windows use doesn't seem to make a difference to the computer game market. However, I've heard rumors about a new game, one that borrows it name from the currently in vogue phenomena of evidently disgruntled and often terminated US Postal workers returning to their former places of employment to deliver a package of mass murder and mayhem. Furthermore it was said that this game was being systematically banned throughout the free world for its over the top violence! How could I resist a game that promised so much? Surely this was an urban myth? So tempting both my doubts and better judgment I walked on over to to a computer store I affectionately refer to as CrapUSA and there it was right on the shelf!

Special Delivery and Beyond: Like Postal's opening musical dirge, the "sound of despair" as I have dubbed it, the rest is pretty much a strange blur. What I do remember is the burning fuel barrels and the blood trails in the snow, the absurd sound of marching band music. The sounds of a female voice pleadings "I can't feel my legs" and "I can't breath" and Postal Dude phrases like "the gun knows" and "oh yeah" which is now part of my regular vocabulary. I remember the infamous "X" key and the more infamous "Q" key... I remember completing Postal just in time to get the expansion pack which was also miraculously available for Mac. Back when Running With Scissors was giving away weekly prizes to Postal fans I wrote in telling them how I am a Church Of Satan priest living in Manhattan and playing Postal was the only thing keeping me from going out and doing the real thing. I immediately received a free T-Shirt and a copy of the Official Postal Game Book. Over the next few years I corresponded several times with Vince Desi and Mike Jaret offering various suggestions and helping to get the word out about Postal, and several contests and promotions associated with the game, and I sent a few intimidating messages to "The Gimp." When RWS announced the development of Postal 2 in early 2002 I pushed (and on occasion threatened) for a Mac version, which I am glad to say I finally saw in December 2004 and which I also helped to promote, and which arrived just a few months after my new iMac G5.

Think Different? Think Again: On December 28th, 2000 the Church Of Satan, of which I am an ordained priest, received a cease and desist notice form lawyers representing Apple Computer ordering them to remove a parody image of Church Of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey accompanied by the Apple logo and their trademarked "Think Different" phrase so it really came as no surprise to me that Apple Computer refused to carry Postal 2 on their retail web site and neither which are enough to make me stop being a Mac user or a Mac evangelist. I own a superior machine and, as I was telling Vince Desi when he asked me to write this piece, "I'm a Mac snob!" I'll try to forget about my huge screen and its "millions of colors" resolution, my broadcast quality sound, I'll try to forget that Mac users don't normally use such terms as "video card" and "sound card" because those "extra features" come built right in. I'll also try to forget that Mac CPUs clock almost 50% higher than their Intel counterparts of the same size, all of this offering an experience just short of what Postal 2 might look like in virtual reality. I'll try to forget all of this as I proceed to pummel my Postal 2 adversary to death with a shovel instead of instantly frying him with the napalm launcher because it's all about having fun. But as the Postal Dude would say "only my weapon understands me," well yeah, that and my computer! Postal 2 and the iMac G5: the next best thing to being there!

 

André Schlesinger lives in New York City's borough of Manhattan and works as a private investigator. He is a member of the Church Of Satan (who incidentally does not endorse this article, its views, Running With Scissors or Postal) and was ordained by its founder Anton LaVey shortly before his death in in 1997. Among other things Schlesinger is a musician/songwriter performing lead vocals and keyboard and guitar synthesizer in the NYC based Punk band Maninblack. He has been a Mac user and enthusiast since 1994.