I'm not quite as stripped down as you, but clicking through to the story on mine gets you to mostly text on a white background. http://odonnellweb.com/anchor/
You weren't actually asking for comments, so sorry if I'm just being annoying, but:
* I love the font size and content column width. More line height than 140% might be good, but I then again have extreme preferences for line height (160%).
* Consider not paginating the posts, or picking a higher limit. You currently have 1 more than you show on the first page, so why not show it on page 1?
* The big image on the search page is funny, but takes a very long time to load. Removing it or moving it to a CDN will make loading that page faster.
* text-align: justify is your friend! Thin columns look weird with right-aligned text.
I like it. I'd maybe adjust the split to favour content over the left image slightly more and clean up a few things, but the design is nice and I love the image panel. Been meaning to do something similar in a few ways.
