Is Spam getting worse?

It seems like it is.

Not only are spammers figuring out how to work their way around the advanced filters found in programs like Thunderbird, they are now sending emails devised specifically to weaken those filters. (You may have received a cryptic email containing excerpts from various books spliced together.)

I googled around for a bit in search of a better solution and found this trick to use Gmail as a spam filter.

It makes sense. In theory, Google should see enough spam to devise a way to effectively filter it.