Word: ballooned
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...these United States. It grows as much as 5,000 pages a year. Emery has started a school for the rule writers. He is trying to make the language at least understandable. He illustrates the problem with a parable: "It is like the two fellows in the hot air balloon who get lost in a cloud and, emerging, call down to a man on the ground, 'Where are we?' The fellow calls back, 'In a hot air balloon.' The answer, like a lot of regulations, is absolutely accurate but totally useless...
Your family pool during Thanksgiving Day is not on the closest score of the game, but on the closest approximate time that the Bullwinkle balloon will appear at the Macy's Parade...
...catches them catnapping every time. As a youngster in Southern California, Steve used to bike over to nearby Disneyland and virtually moved in. He sold guidebooks, practiced card tricks, prowled the park's secret passages after hours, and idolized Wally Boag, a vaudevillian who did card tricks and balloon animals at Frontierland's Golden Horseshoe Revue...
...constantly repeated phrase: "Like blowing up a balloon...
Beyond zoning restrictions, there are countless other minutely detailed regulations at all levels of government?but chiefly local?that balloon builders' costs. A Rutgers University study of 2,000 builders concluded that "excessive" regulation of all kinds now accounts for $9,844, or almost 20%, of the price of a home that sells for $50,000. Many communities specify not only minimum lot sizes but also minimum house sizes; that is a sure way to keep out the lower income groups...