[Ads-l] "Death by a thousand paper cuts": origin?

[Laurence Horn]

Listening to Mark (“Butt Fumble”) Sanchez, one of the announcers of this morning’s Giants-Packers football match in London refer to Aaron Rodgers, Packers quarterback, march his team slowly but relentlessly down the field as performing “death by a thousand paper cuts” on the Giants’ defense, I wondered when this dated from. The original expression it’s based on, “death by a thousand cuts”, evidently renders an ancient Chinese torture method, lingchi, or so claims the internet. But the paper cut version is considerably more recent. Can anyone supply a first cite?  Just curious.

LH (who has experienced many paper cuts, although not into the quadruple digits, and so lived to tell the tale)

P.S.  The OED doesn’t help, having no entry for “paper cut”, much less fatal accumulation therefrom
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