What is the origin of the term "cone of shame"?

I found a reference that predates the Up movie by a good eight years, although I'm sure there must be older usages out there somewhere.

In a 2001 Usenet post to the alt.fashion newsgroup, user Michele317 says:

on a fashion note, he's refusing to wear what the vet calls an 'elizabethan collar' and what i call 'the cone of shame': that plastic lampshade thing. i took him to the vet yesterday and found out his runny eye was due to a tiny scratch in his cornea. i decorated the cone with stickers, and removed the gauze tie and replaced it with a jaunty ribbon, but all to no avail. and a massive thanks to everyone who told me dog accessory websites... so much cute stuff out there!

Cone of shame goes back a ways. Cone of shame is a regional vernacular, which means it's a term not commonly used outside a particular area. I know it had been used around where i live since the 90s. These terms can go national or international through proper exposure though and they stop being regional and become common slang. CoS is similar to Trash Panda which wasn't widely used until recently, TP became popular because of the internet though where as CoS was made popular because of a movie.