There's a bug in the latest Akismet 2.1 for WordPress plugin.
If you get a "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '}'".
Just open akismet.php and on line 284 where it says:
<?php
}
function akismet_caught() {
?>
Replace with:
<?php
function akismet_caught() {
?>
But I still get another message caused by Akismet:
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /wp-content/plugins/akismet/akismet.php:283) in /wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 391
.