How many ways can you foul up something as simple as a cheeseburger? 

The bread can be too hard, or the meat might not be cooked to your liking, but that can be fixed quite easily. 

After I ordered my cheeseburger - medium well with a soft bun - the waiter asked me, "Do you want a plain cheeseburger or one of our specialties?" 

There is such a thing as a specialty cheeseburger? A cheeseburger is a piece of hamburger meat with some cheese on top of it served on a hamburger bun. 

A pork chop is a pork chop and a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger. 

I asked the waiter to elaborate. 

"We have a Cajun cheeseburger," he began, "with spices and cooked onions. We have a chili cheeseburger, and you can also have gazpacho on that. 

"We have a Swiss cheeseburger, a Monterey Jack cheeseburger, a diet cheeseburger - with just meat and cottage cheese on the side. And we have a mushroom cheeseburger." 

I was astounded. 

I said to the waiter, "I'm not certain in which book it appears, but I know that somewhere in the Bible it says, `Thou shalt not put mushrooms on no cheeseburger.' " 

It's just not the right thing to do. 

If I had wanted Cajun food, I would have ordered red beans and rice. If I had wanted chili I would have ordered chili. And gazpacho looks like pond scum. 

I hate Swiss cheese, Monterey Jack sounds like a California beach bum, and at 166 pounds, I'm certainly not on a diet - and I wouldn't eat cottage cheese even if I were. 

Why do we do this sort of thing? Why do we take something as pure and simple as the cheeseburger and go fiddle with it? 

I think we should have kept telephones black. I still see no need for designer undershorts. 

Who decided to take the numbers off watches? Who decided to make modern shower knobs so complicated? 

Why does baseball have a designated hitter? Why do we say brunch instead of late breakfast or early lunch? 

Why did Cadillac change the Seville and ruin it? What was wrong with Jane Pauley in the morning? Didn't corn flakes, Wheaties, Rice Krispies and Cheerios give us enough of a choice of cereals? 

Who changed "light" to "lite?" Why are electric typewriters the size of Plymouths? Why do potato chips come in a can? And why must we have pats of butter in those individual little packages that are so hard to get open? 

Who said it was OK for lawyers to do television commercials? 

I told the waiter I wanted a plain, as-God-intended cheeseburger and a Coke. 

"Classic, I assume," said the waiter. 

"In a six-ounce bottle," I answered.