[OS X Emacs] Gnus is unbearably slow in Aquamacs -- is this just me?

[Kevin Brubeck Unhammer]

Hi,

I tried starting up Gnus today in Aquamacs, but it took over a minute for my 
Group buffer to show -- even without having any subscriptions! I created a 
timer using 

(setq mtimer (run-at-time nil 10 (lambda nil (message (format-time-string 
"%H:%M:%S")))))

and this is what *Messages* shows after doing "M-x gnus y y y":

[nil 18240 16259 238236 10 (lambda nil (message (format-time-string 
"%H:%M:%S"))) nil nil]
14:34:59
14:35:09
Loading gnus...done
Loading gnus-start...done
Loading gnus-agent...done
Unable to open nntp:news, go offline? (y or n) 
14:36:15 [3 times]

nntp (news) open error: ''.  Continue? (y or n) 
14:36:15
Wrote /Users/kiwibird/.newsrc-dribble
Gnus auto-save file exists.  Do you want to read it? (y or n) 
14:36:15
Opening nntp server on news...
Denied server
Opening nntp server on news...failed
Opening nntp server on news...
Denied server
Opening nntp server on news...failed
Checking new news...done
Setting up drafts group
No gnus is bad news
No more unread newsgroups
14:36:16

And on subscribing and restarting Gnus a couple of times, I once got an "out of 
memory" error, and Aquamacs generally turns extremely unresponsive after 
starting Gnus.

Does anyone else have this problem? I'm using aquamacs-version 1.2, gnus-
version 5.11.