The Nose: Smooth move, Ranger — and hey Point Ruston, don’t you know the Flag Code?

Take it from The Sniff — nothing falls flatter than a bad joke aimed at the wrong audience.

That’s why stand-up comics test their unfinished stuff in obscure venues, where beefy security goons hoard spectator cellphones before the show starts. It’s also why all alleged humor in this space is focus-grouped by a stern, sour bucket of no-fun-allowed crab apples prior to publication.

The merry pranksters at The Ranger, or The Northwest Airlifter, or whatever they’re calling their publications these days to cozy up to military readers, learned that lesson the hard way last week.

An April Fool’s edition of The Ranger, briefly posted online, falsely proclaimed that throaty diva Adele would play a free gig at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. OK, maybe that wasn’t too awful — but a teaser item at the top, headed “New Corps Commander a Transgender,” managed to annoy the base and offend an entire demographic at the same time.

The parody edition got a quick hook, and its makers burped out a swift apology, but not before the fake front page pinged across the Twitterverse like a stinky meteor. Moral: Never drink and send.

Other annoyed patriots: A reader who visited glitzy Point Ruston over the weekend points to another surefire fight-starter among military sorts.

She described a double-date with two military veterans in tow. Both have 20 years or more of service logged, and both noticed an array of flags, with banners for Sounders FC and the Seattle Mariners flying proudly, well above the American flag.

“This is a major no-no according to the US flag code,” the reader noted. Well, duh — and you’d think all those developers and restaurateurs catering to a likely layer of military clientele would have that figured that out in this town.

Python-esque compassion: Remember when the city stubbed its toe a while back with a “beautification” effort by the downtown library that looked more like an attempt to boulder-block the homeless?

Never fear — the city is back, with new landscaping and a facelift along Earnest S. Brazill Street, the location of said boulders. Some of the old, mean boulders are moving to a new location under a freeway ramp, the city says — but the nicer boulders are sticking around, to be accompanied by ... shrubbery!

Those with long enough pop-culture memories couldn’t help spotting the Monty Python reference: the shrieking Knights who say Ni, demanding ornamentals and topiaries until their hunger is satisfied. The more cynical sorts saw something else: another effort to shoo away the riffraff, using greenery instead of rocks.

Breaking political news: A survey hit the Sniffbox this week. It seems vapers — also known as users of flavored cloud machines — believe presidential wannabe Donald Trump is most sympathetic to their habit.

At the same time, the results make no sense: 31 percent of vapers favor Hillary Clinton, giving her a clear plurality. Trump trails at 23 percent, closely followed by Bernie Sanders at 22 percent. Does Nate Silver know about this? We demand a close analysis!

After that, we’ll let state Democrats and Republicans fight over who can frame the dodgiest political question against the opposing candidates for governor.

State Dems trotted out their version this week, mocking would-be Republican guv candidate Bill Bryant for refusing to rule out a vote for Trump (Bryant has edged as close as possible to this cliff without jumping).

Knowing the way these parties like to fight, we suspect it won’t be long before the Rs tag Jay Inslee with a similar question about charter schools, since the guv took the bold stand of letting a charter fix pass into law without his signature last week.

Boy, it takes a lot of courage to hold your finger to the breeze.

This story was originally published April 6, 2016 at 11:38 AM with the headline "The Nose: Smooth move, Ranger — and hey Point Ruston, don’t you know the Flag Code?."