You should try Asynchronous Google Analytics. It loads GA in the background, so the rest of the content on the page is not blocked from rendering:
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncTracking.html
Additionally, since you first asked this question, Google has upgraded their serving infrastructure. It’s now faster, and much more reliable than it was in 2008. For most sites, it’s better to use Google’s CDN instead of hosting ga.js yourself. Since the official ga.js is on so many sites, most users will have it in their browser cache.