/tmp/gconfd-michael/lock/ior missing

A couple of days ago I rebooted into Gentoo Linux from Windows to find
that my gnome applications would not work.  It said that
/tmp/gconfd-michael/lock/ior did not exist.  I checked and it doesn't, so
it's not a permissions thing, I don't think.  I spent the last two days
doing emerge --emptytree gnome and then I rebooted the computer.  It still
didn't work.  A few minutes ago I found
http://www.nabble.com/file-'-tmp-gconfd-root-lock-ior'-not-opened-successfully,-td14982053.html

and issued

gconftool-2 --shutdown

and then

gconf-sanity-check-2

Both dumped me back at the prompt with no output.  GConf is not running,
according to ps.  I just looked at the logs, and I see a lot of these:

Jan 25 11:45:25 camille (michael-8657): Bad permissions 777 on directory
/tmp/gconfd-michael
Jan 25 11:45:25 camille (michael-8657): Failed to get lock for daemon,
exiting: Directory /tmp/gconfd-michael has a problem, gconfd can't use it

so maybe it is a permissions problem?  Isn't 777 all-access?  What should
the permission be set to?