What I want to do is show the current CPU usage as a part of the background, like you can do in Gentoo. I have 2 ideas for this, one of them simply being drawing on the background. Is this even possible? I haven't even seen any functions for this.

My second idea is creating a window and somehow making the whole thing transparent, and keeping it in the background. I know that the Windows Sidebar does something like this with the widgets, where you can take them and drag them around the desktop.

So, the question is, how would I go about achieving the affect I want to create.