Device Drivers  --->
  Graphics support --->
    <*> Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support) --->
        --- Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support)
        [*]   Enable legacy fbdev support for your modesetting driver
...and also...
    <*> Intel 8xx/9xx/G3x/G4x/HD Graphics
    <*> DRM Support for bochs dispi vga interface (qemu stdvga)

  Something has changed.  I did some minor tweaking, and rebuilt, which
solved the timezonDo I need another magic setting somewhere else
to enable the options it asks for?  I'm attaching the Xorg log (gzipped)
in case it helps.

I just tried uninstalling xf86-video-vesa and xf86-video-fbdev to see if they were required, and X still runs, so you can ignore those messages.

FWIW i'm kernel 4.7.2 with ~amd64 on a skylake i3.

You dont appear to have evdev setup;
     -> Device Drivers 
         -> Input device support
            -> Generic input layer (needed for keyboard, mouse, ...)

and emerge xf86-input-evdev