Maybe you’ve seen the stories. Like this one. A Congressman from Mississippi warned his staffers they should get shots before they attend a couple of NASCAR events. Maybe this subject is a little far afield for me — I try to stay out of politics — but I have to say I agree with this Congressman completely. I’d never say this in public but the fact is we would never let anyone from Apple attend a NASCAR event without a hazmat suit. Formula One, fair enough, that’s a different situation. Different audience. More in line with the Apple image. NASCAR? One hundred percent Windows users.

Plus, just as a general rule we tend to stay away from the South in its entirety, as this map of our stores in the United States shows. To be honest, with the few stores we do have down there in the South we’ve never had great results. And we’ve had lots of trouble. Weird infections, strange epidemics of hepatitis A through Z (who even knew?), whooping cough, pleurisy, yellow fever, weird rashes, hives, ringworm. It’s like a big Faulknerian fever swamp down there. Nobody from Cupertino will even go for a visit. When we do make people visit the stores in the South they call it “Deliverance week” and spend the whole plane ride making pig-squealing noises. Not quite as bad as “being sent to Mordor,” which is what the engineers call their visits to Shenzhen, China. But you get the idea.

We’re based in California. Our products are designed in California. Surfboards, blonde girls, beaches, blue skies. One of our big draws at Apple is that people want to live in the Bay Area. Why not? It’s the most beautiful, holistic, spiritual, organic, self-righteous place on the entire planet. Plus the weather is sooooo amazing. If you lived here you wouldn’t want to visit other places either.

UPDATE: A few people have written in to complain, and have mentioned Texas. Just FYI, we don’t consider Texas part of the South.