Ok Mibba, You Win This Round.

I have just spent the better part of an hour trying to make the layout to this blog not look like shit.
So, since it's impossible, I'm giving up and I'm going to let it look like shit.
Does anyone have any idea how I can make this cooperate? I'm kind of sick of fixing the same thing ten times and still not seeing it change.
Like seriously? text color that won't change? Images that will only sit center bottom when I really want them to be right center? And don't get me started on transparency.
Basically the layout is dead-set on looking like crap so now it does.
Does anyone have any tricks I can use to make it work? because I'm sick of making new layouts just to see them not work. I want this to look decent not stupid.
<3