before grande there was regular and everyone drank from the same cup

Why you should never ask me for stock advice: Twenty years ago, when Starbucks announced they were on their way to New York, I predicted a fail, sure that New Yorkers were waaaay too savvy to pay premium for coffee when they could get fine brew in this cup for a mere fifty cents. In 1994, when the first Starbucks opened on Broadway, 500 million Greek coffee cups sold each year. A decade later, that number was down more than half, to 200 million. (And my tipster friends in Seattle were laughing all the way to the bank.)

The creator of the 57-year old cup was Holocaust survivor Leslie Buck (born Büch), a paper-cup salesman attempting to break into the New York diner market in 1963. Noting that most owners of diners were Greek, he concocted a design based on the image of the Greek vase known as an amphora. The cup soon became ubiquitous on the streets of New York, standard-issue at diners, coffeeshops, lunchtrucks and coffee carts, a requisite item not only for coffee-toters, but for propmasters for TV shows and films set in the city.

Buck passed away Monday, but died knowing that his Anthora (the altered name, due to his Eastern European accent) survives, albeit too often in the hand of the person next to you on the subway, who you hope keeps it upright as the train takes a curve.

hack your way out of writer's block

It's Saturday. The day you set aside to do what you'd do all day if you didn't have to fill it with shitty meetings. You're all coffeed up and settled at your desk or favorite corner at Starbucks (the one furthest from the open-policy bathroom), laptop ready to peck out that screenplay or pilot script or great American novel. But nothing happens. Every writer has been there. Merlin Mann of 43 Folders provides helpful antidotes. Plus, like Jane Sample, he provides a handsome line of inspiring wear.

* Talk to a monkey - Explain what you’re really trying to say to a stuffed animal or cardboard cutout.
* Do something important that’s very easy - Is there a small part of your project you could finish quickly that would move things forward?
* Try freewriting - Sit down and write anything for an arbitrary period of time—say, 10 minutes to start. Don’t stop, no matter what. Cover the monitor with a manila folder if you have to. Keep writing, even if you know what you’re typing is gibberish, full of misspellings, and grammatically psychopathic. Get your hand moving and your brain will think it’s writing. Which it is. See?
* Take a walk - Get out of your writing brain for 10 minutes. Think about bunnies. Breathe.
* Take a shower; change clothes - Give yourself a truly clean start.
* Write from a persona - Lend your voice to a writing personality who isn’t you. Doesn’t have to be a pirate or anything—just try seeing your topic from someone else’s perspective, style, and interest.
* Get away from the computer; Write someplace new - If you’ve been staring at the screen and nothing is happening, walk away. Shut down the computer. Take one pen and one notebook, and go somewhere new.
* Quit beating yourself up - You can’t create when you feel ass-whipped. Stop visualizing catastrophes, and focus on positive outcomes.
* Stretch - Maybe try vacuuming your lungs too.
* Add one ritual behavior - Get a glass of water exactly every 20 minutes. Do pushups. Eat a Tootsie Roll every paragraph. Add physical structure.
* Listen to new music - Try something instrumental and rhythmic that you’ve never heard before. Put it on repeat, then stop fiddling with iTunes until your draft is done.
* Write crap - Accept that your first draft will suck, and just go with it. Finish something.
* Unplug the router - Metafilter and Boing Boing aren’t helping you right now. Turn off the Interweb and close every application you don’t need. Consider creating a new user account on your computer with none of your familiar apps or configurations.
* Write the middle - Stop whining over a perfect lead, and write the next part or the part after that. Write your favorite part. Write the cover letter or email you’ll send when it’s done.
* Do one chore - Sweep the floor or take out the recycling. Try something lightly physical to remind you that you know how to do things.
* Make a pointless rule - You can’t end sentences with words that begin with a vowel. Or you can’t have more than one word over eight letters in any paragraph. Limits create focus and change your perspective.
* Work on the title - Quickly make up five distinctly different titles. Meditate on them. What bugs you about the one you like least?
* Write five words - Literally. Put five completley random words on a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could be about anything. A block ends when you start making words on a page.

via Boing Boing (thanks for pointing me to it, DKR)