Just incase anyone else wants this information:

I kept going into ~/[username]/.gnome-desktop directory and rm -rf *
everytime i restarted x because everytime, gnome or nautilus (not sure
which) would recreate my home and trash icons. Finally I figured if I
executed chmod 555 .gnome-desktop, no one could write to the
directory. It worked. My icons are gone and have not come back.

so

and that should do it.