How to dual boot windows 8 on imac with osx lion?

just the trial. bootcamp says it wont work unless the harddrive is in a single partition, which is pretty inconvenient... besides, it wouldn't let me mount an iso anyway. everything was greyed out, all it would let me do is download driver updates for a phantom os.

.. vmware fusion wouldn't let me install windows to anything other than its 'virtual' ... er.. thingo... (it runs inside vmware fusion, inside osx).. so that works fine but it's pretty boring, i'd much rather be able to legitimately dual boot from startup.

i have refit installed but it wont recognise any of my installation attempts, which are all pretty feeble since nothing will let me actually copy the install files/install to a partition on the hdd. so when i start it up the only option to load is osx on the hdd and it'll show an sd card or ipod if they're plugged in, think it says 'legacy,' which, when entered, yields nothing but 'no operating system,' hahhaa. no surprise i suppose. it won't recognise other hdd partitions... and now im pretty sure i can't get rid of them, unless i delete pretty much everything

tried using a few usbs and sd cards as start up drives, erhh...

just wondering what other programs are out there, i guess. boot camp wouldn't let me install win8 even before i partitioned... now it's saying that i need a single journaled hdd sector.... well, as far as i know, they're all journalled.... anyway, i'm new to macs so anything is appreciated.

i'm sure this was pretty incoherent but thanks, guys, for anything. ^_^