How do I get out of the "no bootable device" screen?

I am doing a clean install of both operating systems and successfully deleted the windows partition, and reinstalled the Mac partition. When I got boot camp assistant started and it restarts to prepare installing windows, I am faces with the "no bootable device" screen. It says to insert a boot disk. Currently the Mac snow leopard disk is in the drive (in order to access certain disk utility functions, etc) but I can't get the disk out. I've tried force ejecting in every way and it won't eject.

So I try to boot back into the Mac partition by holding down option/alt, and it doesn't work. It just goes straight to the same no bootable device screen. How do I get out of this? Every suggestion I've seen is to hold down option and boot into Mac and I can't do that. It's almost like the keyboard does NOT respond at all while in the boot up process, can't force eject by holding keys, can't boot into anything by holding keys. Solution?