Love it Shiba !

Perhaps you were too busy to read the article before leaving a comment. In the article I have a whole section on –

2. Set Number of Comments

Another way to deal with slow load-time is to reduce the number of comments shown on each page.

Again go to Settings >> Discussion. The last bullet under Other Comment Settings allows you to set the maximum number of comments shown on each page.

This article has page speed tests as well as a detailed explanation of gravatars and page speed.

http://www.seomofo.com/wordpress/comments-slow-page-speed.html

Here is an excerpt from the article –

Something I found interesting about WordPress is that the Mystery Man default Gravatar image is stored on gravatar.com. So the reason why the Blank avatar and my custom avatar returned faster page load speeds…is because they are both stored on my own server. Theoretically, you might be able to speed up your page loads by simply saving a copy of Mystery Man to your own server and designating it as your default.
~~[SEOmofo]

This article on rude people may also be helpful.
http://shibashake.com/dog/rude-dogs-and-rude-people#rude-people