So the fact that it's slow helps yeah, so I imagine slowing it down even more would help even more. And I totally get the tension between doing something cool and removing everything that isn't strictly needed. I'd still get rid of it completely (ie make it based on a user action instead of automatic) but that's just me.

It is nowhere near as bad as a blog I read where the guy had a rainbow background explode out of his profile picture (that scrolled with you) every few seconds. I couldn't even get one paragraph through that one ;-)