Most male rational thinkers bring a raft of highly discussionable topics to a dinner party, because men like to prepare.
But sometimes we prepare the wrong things.
My recent conversational tour de force has been the difficulty I have had trying to put on weight.
Apparently women pray nightly for the opposite of this.
Which means at any dinner party or social occasion I am currently entrancing only half of the human race.
But this subject has become so obsessing, I still bring it up in front of women anywhere.
I will even shout it at them as they drive past me in cars.
Being wholly objectionable to women, of course, is neither here nor there - men have survived this minor blip for centuries.
But I would perhaps have preferred sustained discussion - surely women constantly trying to take weight off would have something to say to men trying to put it on.
Alas, no.
I am implored to change the subject immediately.
Fortunately Google has been throwing up some pretty nifty suggestions as I strive to fulfil my New Year's Resolution of getting back to 60kg without amputation.
Scarily, on Christmas Day as I surveyed a meal that was bigger than me, I weighed 48.5.
At this point I was weighing myself on the kitchen scales, not the bathroom ones.
Now I am just over 50.
My podiatrist recommended relentless junk food, but that didn't make a nob of difference.
My doctors have offered reasoned scientific explanations, but I didn't get where I am today by bowing my head earnestly for reasoned scientific explanations.
I need the gobbledygook of Google.
The early sites I was sent to after posing the question "how can scrawny become brawny?" involved me paying ridiculous amounts of money.
Google does this far too often.
But then I found Skinny Vinny.
That's what they used to call Vince Del Monte before he discovered the secret to turning a pencil-neck body into something hot girls wanted.
At school, explained Vince, all the hot girls dated boys who were big and could save them from nuclear disasters.
This, mind you, was a stupid assertion on Skinny Vinny's part, as only weedy, bespectacled pencil-neck geeks with big brains could possibly work out a way to save a hot girl from a nuclear disaster, but I read on.
The After Photos of Skinny Vinny were impressive: his upper body grew so pectoral he couldn't do up the zip on his jacket.
Vince went from 141lb (63.9kg) to 190lb (86.1kg) in 24 weeks.
He said it was all about muscle development.
Vince had an online video, for which he said I had better be on the edge of my seat, as it was pretty damn exciting.
He scorns what he calls The Five Dirty Little Lies of weight gain.
If you train like a professional body builder, your body will become that of a professional body builder.
Impossible, said Vince, that would be like reading War and Peace before you read Run Spot Run.
Vince had obviously read Run Spot Run.
And you can forget expensive gym equipment, steroids, pills and supplements.
Vince said he wouldn't feed supplements to his grass.
All of this made alarming sense to me.
I am on a health supplement drink three times a day which requires special government approval.
As does the cyclist's wonder drug EPO, which I have been enjoying immensely for some time, twice a week.
And I have been on a steroid for as long as I can remember, albeit not one that gives you acne and what Vince says is the worst thing of all, small, ahem, testicles.
I should have the body the size of Sonny Bill Williams.
But I haven't.
Hence I am now on (small) weights and have reactivated the half-broken exercycle which Mister Nobody laid sideways on the floor when tidying the guest room and buggered the magnets.
I expect a stunning After Photo by September.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
