depressed roommate hitting the N64 pretty hard

Once again, inspired by the Onion...

NASHVILLE, TN -- Local graduate student Joseph Steiner has recently noticed his roommate spending the majority of his waking hours playing N64 in a frozen-pizza-fueled haze of depression and detachment.

"Some days I'll leave for class early in the morning, and I'll hear gun shots coming from his room," Steiner said. "Then when I get back later that afternoon he's fixing a microwave burrito. Usually I'll try to ask him how his day was, but he just acts like he's in a rush and says he can't talk because he has a Perfect Dark mission on pause."

Steiner's roommate has been known to enjoy a little multi-player action from time to time with his friends, but since December 19th of last year, he has logged 289 hours of solo play time with his beloved console, which will likely go down as one of the most deplorable records in the history of gaming.

While the sadness of his situation is clearly apparent, it has not come without its share of relative excitement. He has incredibly recovered all 100 Gold Skulltulas in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time without using "one of those stupid walkthroughs." He has also set new time trials records on every Mario Kart 64 course except for Bowser's Castle, though he claims he will beat his old time within a few days as long as "those stupid blue block dudes will quit being so gay."

He also seemed to question the sexuality of the joystick on his yellow controller.

"It is pretty annoying that the closest thing to a conversation we've had in the past month has been an apathetic explanation of how to recover Biggoron's Sword in Zelda," Steiner confesses. "Really, the only time he hasn't seemed utterly miserable was after a trip to McKay's Used Books where he found a used copy of some lame snowboarding game. He seemed pumped about a Dion Blaster or something."

The source of his crippling depression remains unknown, but Steiner says it might have something to do with his steady diet of Totino's Pizza Rolls and the death of his pet hampster, Mr. Bojangles.