Incidentally, you don't have to override head-tags. You can just change the global value on the Variables page.
Sorry about the usability issues. It was pretty good for 1997.
I find that this happens to me quite often in FreeBSD. Usually the way it works is that someone asks me to add a feature which I had never considered before; I do so; and then I completely forget that I added said feature and revert back to thinking of my code as I originally wrote it.
I don't know if this is the situation here, but I think it's much easier to change code than it is to change one's mind.
But like craigslist, it's a very ironic cool and minimalist design that I hope you don't change.
Looking at it with firebug, the whole nav is one tall .gif and all the links are mapped via rectangular coordinates. The title for each essay is also a .gif, though they have alt description tags.
I know its your baby, but if you managed this with wordpress or another CMS, it would be really easy and you could be much more flexible to add new things. With wordpress, you could make a theme just like your current, but with CSS styled text links and you would just make static pages for all your new essays and whatnot. I could recreate your whole site in about an hour if you'd like.