Is there a way to QUICKLY empty the trash?

When throwing out, say 250000 items, it can take a LONG time. First you wait for the "Preparing to empty the Trash..." and then you suffer through "Emptying the Trash..." My question is, "Is there a quick way to do this?", and if not "Why not?"

Years ago there was the ability to hold down something like the option & command keys while emptying the trash, and it emptied very quickly, but either I've forgotten the key combination, or it's just not allowed anymore.

Having a quick way to empty trash would be very helpful when performing operations such as,
1) clearing an external drive of most (but not all) data
2) removing a very large iPhoto library (or libraries)
etc...

Although I've searched dilegently for an answer to this, all I've found are suggestions to us the "erase" command in Disk Utility or the rm command in terminal. The erase command is useless if you want to keep files on the disk, and the rm command doesn't seem to provide a speed improvement, at least in my hands.

Thanks