I was just looking up "semicolon" in wikipedia to see whether I was using it correctly. Near the bottom of the entry is this tip, which prompted me to skip it:

"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college." - Kurt Vonnegut