Virtualenv is really not complicated. I think your time would be better spent learning how it works than just hacking some crappy workarounds to skip the problem.
It can be a pain when trying to distribute software to users (non-python programmers). What I usually end up having to do is distribute virtualenv with my code, and include a simple Makefile/build script to setup the venv. Invariably someone tries to then move that directory and everything ends up getting screwed up until I can tell them to run "make clean all".
I'm not too sure that this would end up being any easier, but maybe...
What I'm doing with streetsign[1] is including a download virtualenv step in the setup script[2]. The virtualenv gets set up in `.virtualenv/`, so most users won't even see it.
I'm not too sure that this would end up being any easier, but maybe...