I guess the wave of trackback spam has stopped. Spam Karma was updated to 1.15, which tries to address trackback spammers. I did the same and got his latest version, then I re-enabled pings/trackbacks on all posts (via the database). I’ll see if it works.
The method I used before was just a tourniqet (as O.F. Jay puts it) until the plugin developers were able to put up an updated version to fight this. Matt Mullenweg’s post about trackback spam links to three plugins you can try to fight WordPress comment-type spam with.
Hopefully now I can return you to your regularly scheduled program of ambiguous mumbo jumbo…