I'm still waking up so I don't totally get what the mess is on your browser there, but it's not working, I get that. It's interesting since the code I submitted works in IE7, FF3, Op 9.5 on...

Change width to min-width in wrapper
Add white-space: nowrap in message


<style type="text/css">
#wrapper {
position: absolute;
right: 100px; /* put it anywhere */
top: 20px; /* put...

Place the absolute positioning on the #wrapper div instead of the #message div since that is the container for the message and the image ...

The text sprawl wasn't happening last night in IE but...

If there is no compulsory reason to try and align the image and text with javascript I would definitely do it with CSS ... plus it "just works".

If you need to update the image with javascirpt,...

Just a place to start, first get rid of your CSS errors.
You can validate the CSS at this website:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

I noticed that you have un-commented non-CSS (plain text...