I’m waiting for the Census to slim down.

Fortunately, like instructors in a cruel class of yoga, statistical minds will hone the fat and manipulate the muscle of the Census. Until it makes some sense, delivers to its practitioners a sense of smug inner peace and starts to look hot in a unitard. For now, all that I see is a bloated mass of data with thighs like parchment and noisy, creaky housemaids’ knee.

That is, of course, if one discounts the salient and shocking news that Men Don’t Do Much Housework. In advance of nationwide news response to this Outrage, I’d just like to thank my shallow Op Ed sisters for the columns they are currently writing. Apparently, the Patriarchy has not yet been dismantled. Well, who knew?

While I await the diet and the digest, there are some conclusions one can easily draw, however, on one’s own. No doubt, the Australia Institute are feeling properly righteous re their predictions of Towering Debt and the myopic consumerism blinding us all to the things that truly matter in life. Yes, it seems, we are earning and spending more.

Apparently, the free market economy has claimed our souls. Who knew?

The thing that caught my unscholarly attention most, however, was the rise and rise of Dharmic religion. While thousands, it seems, are turning away from the Anglican Church, thousands more are eyeing off Ganesh and sundry deities with the lust of theological consumers.

Buddhism and Hinduism are big news in this Census. And I’d like to draw, for personal reasons, the conclusion that the same people who are overspending and consuming themselves into a wanton abyss are the same that are fretting about their samsaras.

My neighbour who was once called Sharon and now only answers to a more Tibetan noise is among this group of Tantric shoppers. She owns three houses, wears only Burberry (not always knock offs) yet continues to visit the spiritual supermarket where she takes a little Dalai and a little Shiva from the shelves.

While I am yet to buy some harmonic chanting from iTunes (or, actually even purchase an iPod) I feel certain that this will occur.