Hello! I need detailed instructions on doing one of the following:

1. Removing the Trash entirely from the dock. (I don't want to make an
alias or put it on my desktop, I just want to get rid of it. The item
at the far right of the dock should be whatever document or minimized
window I decide to put there. In my case, it'll be a minimized
QuickTime video which will play where the trash was previously.)

2. Changing the trash can icon in the Dock on the fly. (Normally, you
can change the dock icon by editing HiToolbox.rsrc and restarting the
dock and/or the system, but that would require quitting the dock,
which I don't want. I want to be able to change the dock's icon at
will, instantly, without having the dock disappear on me.)

This is officially "a tough question."

To buck the trend of researchers not wanting to give (and questioners
not wanting to pay for) negative answers, I've got to tell you "You
can't do that."

The first point - removing the trash icon from the dock completely  -
does not seem to be supported. There are numerous methods of
duplicating the trash on the desktop, in the tool bar, and just about
anywhere else you'd like to duplicate it, but none as to how to get
rid of it. For detailed info on those duplication methods, you'll find
lots of choices at http://www.resexcellence.com/ ,
http://discussions.info.apple.com/ and at http://www.macosxhints.com/
.

The second point - changing the trash icon appearance without
restarting - also does not seem to be supported. The trash icon
appears to be set as the dock is initializing, although this is
undocumented. There is no documented method to force the dock to
re-initialize without restarting it. One short-cut would to log out,
and log back in again, but this is not what you are after.

Although it is little comfort to you, in researching your question, I
searched :

http://www.resexcellence.com/
http://discussions.info.apple.com/
http://www.macosxhints.com/ 
http://www.macosxapps.com/
http://www.cocoadevcentral.com/
http://www.macdevcenter.com/mac/
http://developer.apple.com/
http://www.darwinfo.org/
http://www.stepwise.com/
and 
http://safari.oreilly.com/mainhom.asp?home

The search terms I used were 

"MacOS X" AND trash
"MacOS X" AND hack
trash icon dock
move trash icon
delete trash icon

I also used text and plist editors to open and search through the
preferences files on my Mac, looking for anything that looked like it
might offer a clue. None of the files in any of the
Library/Preferences files held information of help.

One possible solution for you would be to pose this as a challenge to
the folks who attend the MacHack conference (http://www.machack.com)
The people who attend are quite amazing and often manage to do things
that are unsupported and impossible.

There are ways to overhaul your MacOS X interface. Tools such as
MetaMorphX (http://www.enteract.com/~doc/charonsoft/index.html)
completely replace the theme files including icons, windows, button
and the works, but some of the changes that are applied require a
restart. Perhaps the magicians involved in that project would be
willing to share their voodoo with you. I've not found any public or
open source projects doing similar things.

All the best.
daveslipp_ga

One option might be to use a completely different interface, like drop
drawers (a $20 shareware program):

Drop Drawers
http://www.sigsoftware.com/dropdrawers/

In addition to Drop Drawers, my favorite customizable dock-like thing
is DragThing, which you can find with a simple search of Google. 
There are several hints on macosxhints.com and elsewhere about how to
force quit the dock.  You can use this either to have it reload your
Trash with the new logo or disappear the Dock altogether, if I
remember correctly.  I guess its kinda a dumb question, but why would
you want to get rid of the trash anyway?  You can throw things away
with it, and it is contextual, letting you eject or burn, depending on
what you drag over it.  If you don't want it sticking there moving
around, you can use TinkerTool to pin your dock to the right, so that
the Trash stays out of the way.  Or another idea might be to replace
the Trash image with a blank image -- no movie, I know, but at least
you don't have to see that wire basket you despise so much!