You should use the name your host knows itself by instead. This can be found with the hostname command. It is probably not smart to run named when you are not connected to the net, this is because named will try to send queries to the net and it has a long timeout, and you have to wait for this timeout every time some program tries to resolve a name. If you're using dialup you should start named when connecting and kill it when disconnecting. But please see the FAQ section for a tip.
Some people like to use a forwarders directive on slow connections.
If your internet provider has DNS servers at 1.2.3.4 and 1.2.3.5 you can insert the line forwarders 1.2.3.4 1.2.3.5 in the named.boot file. Also leave the root.cache file empty. That will decrease the amount of IP traffic your host originates, any possibly speed things up. This especially important if you're paying pr.