query_posts issue, can’t exclude categories

Hi, i’m having a tiny struggle with the query_posts() function.

query_posts('showposts=2'); while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> [post-content-stuff]

Works like a charm. When i add &cat=-19 to the query_posts parameter, it only returns the two very first posts ever to be posted, not the two last ones – which results in my front page showing over four year old posts.

Why is this? It seems to work just fine for everyone else wanting to exclude a category, so i must obviously be doing something wrong…