Ok, early 2000s aesthetic sans a flash intro. But we're talkin' internet years here so you're still rockin Air Force 1s, but their as popular as ever. And like I said earlier - it doesn't matter. Not like Buffett and his famous annual letters to shareholders are looked down on because he has a "thrifty" site either http://www.berkshirehathaway.com

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.