styling post with CSS

I hope this is not too horribly vague and that someone might help me. I implemented Matt’s Asides for WP 1.5.x and I want a nicer differentiator for the asides than the li bullet point you get in default/kubrick. So I read about nifty corners and found the matching plugin and assigned the javascript “niftyAddLoad.js” to ul.asides. But the text and the javascript/CSS don’t seem to be getting along as you can see with my ‘bully pulpit’ aside. It didn’t take me long to exhaust my very limited skills and so if anyone can offer suggestions or advice I’m all ears…thanks!