I can't keep up with the spam - I find it impossible to wade thru all the spam and spot and despam the small percential of genuine comments that get caught, which creates a Catch 22. So I'd be happy to pay for a validation tool upgrade.
In particular, there are a lot of spammers now posting comments *designed* to degrade akismet's judgement by looking like spam to a human eye but blurring the distinction to akisment's eye.