Spam with no purpose?

[Deepak Jain]

Can someone explain to me (publicly or privately) why someone would send 
spam with no product to sell, no position to pitch, nothing except text 
designed to get by a spam filter -- without even HTML to KNOW it got by 
a spam filter..

For example:

From: Joe Legitimate <jlegit@university.edu>
To: Deepak Jain <deepak@ai.net>
Subject: [dictionary word]

[dictionary word] [dictionary word] [dictionary word] [dictionary word] 
[dictionary word] [dictionary word] [dictionary word] [dictionary word] 
[dictionary word] [dictionary word] [dictionary word] [dictionary word] 
[dictionary word] [dictionary word] [dictionary word] [dictionary word] 
[dictionary word] [dictionary word] [dictionary word] [dictionary word]

--- EOM ---

I don't understand why one would waste the time, if its a test, why 
would it get out in public?

I would like to think I am being naive, but I just don't see the upside 
unless it were particularly targeted at me or my mailserver to determine 
our response or response time, etc.

Thanks in advance,

DJ