Check this video out of this guy using a screensaver as a desktop. Kreg Steppe Technorama podcast and I got it to work no problem.

To turn it on run the following command in terminal (Remove break in the command below to make it one lone line)

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/
Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &

This will display your current selected screensaver as your background. To change screensavers, close the terminal windows to stop it, and select another screensaver then run the command again.  To turn it off, shut down your terminal program. It will suck up some processor but, it’s a blast.