Video: The Arrest of a U.S. Spy Working as a Russian Intelligence Officer Could Tell Us a Lot About Trump and Putin

Rachel Maddow gave us an interesting and terrifying theory.

The thin-skinned, embarrassing, in over his head dummy that lives in the White House hates the idea of people thinking he's a puppet of Vladimir Putin and Russia. When BuzzFeed News published the now infamous dossier of intelligence reports, that though unverified, were deemed worthy of briefing both former President Obama (wow, that hurts) as well as President Trump, the Trump camp was furious. Serial liar Kellyanne Conway went on Seth Meyers and lied that Trump wasn't briefed on the information. They also have denied any and all of the connections between Russia and their campaign. But new information coming out of Russia raises some interesting questions about the validity of those claims.

Don't Be The Worst: A 10-Step Plan To Keeping Things Hot

It's often been said that variety is the spice of life, which means some pretty depressing things for monogamy. Namely, that being with the same person forever, sexually and romantically, is sort of the equivalent of eating your favorite food every day. Most people love rice, but not as their only option, aside from masturbating to pictures of rice's Facebook friends in sexy bikini vacation photos.

I firmly believe that you can have rice every day, if you mix it up. (I mean this literally if you live in certain Asian countries or are severely impoverished and have a hotpot). You can keep the flame alive, in the bedchamber and the heart chamber with minimal effort. The key is remembering to do little things for your wife or longtime girlfriend or life partner that keep her surprised and sexually interested— almost to the point of wariness. I know that remembering to be unexpected seems counterintuitive, which is why it's important to plan your spontaneity with laser precision.

I've assembled some tips to keep your relationship feeling freshly shucked. Love is like a car, or intestines, and romance is like the oil change, or colonoscopy. Print these out and keep them in your pocket—you'll be magically transported back to a time when you didn't think of sex as an annoying reason to take off your robe. Back when seeing each other still made you a little nervous. Maybe nervous-er, if you're really good at it.

So put a rose in your teeth and let's go!

• Set an iPhone alert once a month for ROMANCE. On that day, do something romantic, like bringing her a favorite snack or showing up at work to serenade her in front of her colleagues. If she ever sees the iPhone alert, act casual and pretend like ROMANCE is the name of an adult video store.

• Sometimes jealousy is a real aphrodisiac. Why not give her the illusion that you've been cheating on her without any of the actual cheating. Have a friend call your cell phone repeatedly at odd hours, or quickly cover up your computer screen whenever she walks into a room. Now take her in your arms. Surprise! You've been taking a ballroom dancing class the whole time.

• Use an Internet coupon for a couple's massage. Let the soothing music and scent of bamboo take you into your own little world, and feel free to talk like the two people giving the massage aren't there. Maybe discuss how weird it is to be massaged, as a couple, by two people, and wonder aloud if the masseuses would consider having sex with you.

• Why not make a trail of rose petals leading to the bedroom? Or breadcrumbs. Sometimes women reeeeeeeeally want to have sex and we just get lost.

• Have a friend call your significant other from the hospital and say that she should get down there, right away. (If you don't have a friend, use your Paul Lynde impression and pretend to be a sassy male nurse.) When she gets there, have a doctor tell her that you have been in a terrible accident. Surprise! The doctor is a stripper.

• Disaster often brings people together. Try to engineer some kind of bridge collapse when you are together, or schedule a vacation when you think there will be an earthquake.

• Open Tilda Swinton's Wikipedia page. Say something like, "Wow, Tilda Swinton and her three-way marriage are really progressive, don't you think? She's so unconventionally beautiful." If your significant other agrees, go ahead and start checking the Portland Craigslist for people who want to be part of some kind of arrangement. If she doesn't, go ahead and masturbate to Tilda Swinton's Wikipedia page. She is unconventionally beautiful.

• Women really love musicians and sleeping with famous authors or actors. But if you don't have any natural talent, remember that women have really active imaginations. Accidentally crush things to give the impression that you have acquired incredible strength, and maybe let her catch you changing into or out of an outfit really quickly. Come home late at night disheveled and distracted, and maybe make one of those fake newspaper headlines about a mysterious vigilante running amok in the city. She will start to think that maybe you are Batman, who has an awful lot of sex. However she may start to think you are a serial killer and will be so relieved when you are not that she will have sex with you.

• Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Just disappear for a few days. If you're not a minor, she can't do anything for 24 hours. Try it!

• Pick up a copy of Bon Appetit and choose a recipe together. Make a day of it and shop European-style by hitting a farmer's market and butcher shop instead of going to a supermarket chain. Then prepare the meal together while drinking a nice wine and listening to a compilation CD of Cole Porter songs. When she reveals that she's poisoned your food, reveal that you have also poisoned hers. Laugh, and die well-matched. You're in love again!

Don't Be the Worst: The Fight Against Whimsy

In the past year, I've learned to avoid men who want to take women out for baked goods.

To most women, this doesn't say, "Wow, this is the kind of guy I want to let kiss frosting out of my bangs." This says other things. Like, "This guy probably has one of those bracelets that will alert his parole officer if he drinks," or, "I need to change my Google image results to look less like somebody who can be lured out of the house by pastry like some kind of Brothers Grimm orphan."

Or worse yet: "This is one of those whimsy guys."

Fellows, I beseech you: No more whimsy.

Before I go any further, let me say that sometimes whimsy is great. I like a taxidermied armadillo holding a beer can as much as the next girl, and I think that turning a bunch of old Airstreams into a pricy motel is an important step in taking some of the stigma out of trailer living. But I would like to suggest that we take a scented panda eraser to whimsy in the realm of adult, grown-up going out.

While we finally, thankfully are reaching a point where fewer men seem to be confusing having a personality with having a moustache, we're confronted with an even lamer sex scourge: Men who confuse dating with an opportunity to showcase a series of highly cultivated quirks.

Outings with a Whimsy Guy read like a kind of Mad Lib involving a series of increasingly diabetes-y nouns. Let's go to Coney Island to eat ginger cookie and Nutella ice cream sandwiches and make up back stories for every couple we see on the Ferris Wheel while the gelato drips onto our gingham sleeves.

This kind of goofiness makes me long for the predictability of chugging a bottle of wine across from someone you're terrified of while wishing you'd had the sense to see the movie first so you'd at least have some kind of Gyllenhaal-based talking point. Dating can be awkward and nervous and boring, but using whimsy to try to charm your date is the equivalent of adding a magical mentally disabled person to your movie to try to charm your audience. Did none of you see Radio? Don't be Radio!

In fact, you can probably blame movies for this kind of behavior. I'm reminded of the live-action drunk post-breakup email, 500 Days of Summer, which I totally saw on a plane and didn't rent and specially buy Bagel Bites to emotionally eat during. Zooey Deschanel dumps a guy after he drags her to a diner to have pancakes for dinner. Pancakes for dinner! You know you've crossed some kind of line when you've out-Zooey Deschanel-ed Zooey Deschanel.

You know how we all hate irony now? Whimsy is even worse because it pretends to be sincere. It is the opposite of sincere. People who are not secretly dying of terminal illness in a movie just look silly blowing bubbles on a date because they don't know what to do with their hands, or do everything like they're being secretly Instagrammed. A girl wants to get to know a guy, not be part of the Facebook status he's ginning up underneath his fanciful hat.

I'd like to suggest a litmus test for whether or not you are being whimsical. Would Danny Trejo shake his head at you? For example: Let's say you have named your bike Sharon. Is it a customized Super Glide? Invite your date to ride Sharon! Is it a turquoise beach cruiser? No va, hombre.

Admittedly, when it's not forced, whimsy can be OK. Even kind of nice. My grandmother loves to relate a story about a guy who tried to cancel a date with her when she was 19 because he had, literally, a dime to his name. "We can have fun on a nickel each," said my awesome grandma, and they did a bunch of free stuff like stealing a ride on a trolley car and sneaking penny hotdogs into a nickel movie. My grandma said she had a great time, and if that guy hadn't died on a submarine two weeks later, he might have been my grandfather.

Ignoring the logistical flaws in that supposition, the only reason I give old people in Ken Burns documentaries and those When Harry Met Sally interstitials carte blanche to be whimsical is because those people were constantly threatened with death by explosion. You guys want to wear lunatic cloches and scat in songs? Go for it! If you're not under threat by air raid or spending your days manufacturing artillery, you have no excuse to act that crazy.

It's possible that the Internet or cute movies have forced us to distill our personalities into quotes and adorable moments and dating-profile charisma. But it's important to remember that you are a person and not a mid-priced chain restaurant. Adorning yourself with tchotchkes doesn't make you charming. It makes you a very sad place to sit in a Buffalo mall.

Julieanne Smolinski AKA Boobs Radley is a writer who has been in a monogamous relationship with the Internet since 1993. She tweets here.

Sex Trade

Want to take the sex in your relationship to eruptive new heights? The hottest and most salacious mom in Canada, Kelly Oxford, proposes that it's time to put sexual favors on the table and start negotiating

In the beginning, every serious romantic entanglement is an electric, superconducting, steamy, fleshy hump festival. New sex partner = new sex, and new sex = lots of sex. That's sex math. You're in the kitchen making pasta sauce—bam!—you're having sex on the floor. You're parking the car in the garage—bam—you're having sex in the car. But inevitably, invariably, it wears off. Soon all your conversations, once so filled with erotic promise, are about bills and barfy kids and how that swollen knee makes your leg look like Jackie Gleason's.

Then, one night, she's sitting next to you on the couch, perfecting her mock-Piers Morgan accent, when she stops and says, "Man, I really want a Slurpee." Meaning, of course: "Will you go get me a Slurpee?" But by now you're way past the white-knight stage of the relationship, so you don't budge. And then it occurs to her.

"Will you get me a Slurpee if I give you a blow job?"

And everything goes silent for a moment. Then she raises her eyebrows and does that blowie-pantomime thing with her tongue inside her cheek. The one she hasn't done since, oh, month four of the relationship. With a single gesture, an arousing new world has busted open. You are—let's face it—whoring, but with a safe, committed partner. In no time, you're trading tricks for trips to the dry cleaner. You're making dinner for the kids, and later that night you're coming twice.

The negotiation process quickly becomes its own thrill. But know the terrain, boys. Example: Your woman proposes that you pick up a box of ice cream sandwiches, a copy of W magazine, and a bottle of Essie nail polish (Lollipop color) in exchange for a three-position sex session. Analysis: That's not a good deal. Renegotiate. For that price, she'll also put on those thigh-high black stockings. And trust me, this is fun for her, too. A gentle spanking in exchange for taking out the trash during a rainstorm? A brief experimentation with a ball gag for two weeks of laundry? All this can be yours.

Sex bartering has been a part of my married life for so long that it's hard to believe there are couples who haven't thought of this yet. Now when I see a father at the water park with three young children and no mother in sight, I no longer think, "What a cool dad" or "How sad—widowed so young." Instead I think, "That guy's getting fucked for hours tonight." One of the biggest "deals" my husband and I ever "closed" was over a handbag that I wanted after our second child turned mine into a paint canvas. Among other things, I agreed to a Brazilian wax. Yes, I could've just bought the bag and skipped the bartering (and the wax). But what the hell fun is that?

There are, of course, ground rules. Number one: Only agree to sex acts that you're both actually interested in trying. If she doesn't really want to do the reverse cowgirl, dangling a pint of Cherry Garcia is not cool. Resentment will creep in. Number two: No reneging. Back-outs are the first sign that your "deals" are no longer in kinky air quotes, that the whole game has turned bloodless and one-sided.

Sexual heat in a marriage is a funny thing; sometimes it roars back when you least expect, and sometimes you have to light your own match. Last month my husband and I were out to dinner, and our waitress giggled and flirted with him the whole time—I could practically see her ovulating. And yet watching her eye-grope him snapped my libido wide awake. Our deal later that night was simple and unspoken: He could have whatever he wanted, and all he had to do in exchange was spend the rest of his life with me.